Never having read the book, my opinion can only be based on the attributes of the film, not on its reproduction of the book. And the greatest attribute I see in this film is the depiction of the historical moment in France, with all the decadence and poverty characteristic of the period and of the literature of the time.
The characters are a bit plain and one dimensional, but it ends up not being a great problem to the plot, since the most important thing here, the main character actually, is fate, a literary obsession of French literature of the 19th century and well transposed to the film. Although the final message is optimistic, the idea of fate and the inability to run from one's past is recurrent in the whole film.
I'm sure it doesn't do justice to the book, but it can be a good incentive to someone still willing to read the book.
The characters are a bit plain and one dimensional, but it ends up not being a great problem to the plot, since the most important thing here, the main character actually, is fate, a literary obsession of French literature of the 19th century and well transposed to the film. Although the final message is optimistic, the idea of fate and the inability to run from one's past is recurrent in the whole film.
I'm sure it doesn't do justice to the book, but it can be a good incentive to someone still willing to read the book.