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Les Ambitieux
2007 Comedy / Drama / Romance
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Credits
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Director: Catherine Corsini
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Script: Catherine Corsini, Benoît Graffin, Cédric Kahn
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Photo: Hélène Louvart, Guillaume Schiffman
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Music: Grégoire Hetzel
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Cast: Karin Viard (Judith Zahn),
Eric Caravaca (Julien),
Jacques Weber (Saint-Clair),
Gilles Cohen (Simon),
Hélène Babu (Daphné),
Jacqueline Danno (Martha),
Claire Maurier (Mme Zahn, la mère de Judith),
Chantal Neuwirth (Marceline Fouek),
Renan Carteaux (Mathieu Séchard),
Marie Kremer (Marie),
Alexia Barlier (Barbara)
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Country: France
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Language: French
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Runtime: 90 min
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Aka: Ambitious
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Summary
Julien, an aspiring young writer, succeeds in getting an interview with
publisher Judith Zahn. Without reading Julien’s novel,
Judith rejects it, but encourages him to persevere, mainly as a pretext
to make him her lover. By chance, Judith’s mother has just
given her a suitcase containing some documents written by her estranged
father, a writer and political activist in the 1970s, who died in
combat in South America some years ago. Secretly looking through
these writings, Julien has an idea for a best selling novel, based on
the real-life experiences of Judith’s father. Having completed
the first draft, he allows the publisher to read it. Judith’s
reaction is not what he had expected...
Review
Compared with many of Catherine Corsini’s recent films, Les Ambitieux is a surprisingly
conventional kind of film - an old-fashioned romantic comedy-drama with
a pretty banal subject and a fairly predictable storyline.
Yet, coming after such indigestible, overly stylised fare as La
Répétition and Mariées mais pas trop
(2003), Les Ambitieux will be
a far more attractive proposition for most French film
enthusiasts. Maybe it is because it tries less hard to impress
that the film is more successful at revealing Corsini’s talent for
filmmaking - it certainly shows us a far more mature and insightful
director than much of her previous work would suggest.
Whilst the film’s presentation is seductively slick and stylish - at
times evoking fond memories of François Truffaut (a director
Corsini admires greatly) - the thing that most sells the film are the
performances from its two lead actors. Karin Viard had previously
worked with Catherine Corsini on the 1999 film La
Nouvelle Eve and has since gained a solid reputation for
playing complex tragicomic women juggling dangerous neuroses with
powerful inner desires. Here, Viard is at her near-best,
convincingly combining the darker side of someone who is unable to
trust her true emotions with a far more sympathetic inner
persona. As the naïve young writer Julien (a kind of
latter-day Antoine Doinel), the excellent Eric Caravaca brings to the
film a realism and sincerity which makes a somewhat lacklustre
storyline considerably more engaging that it otherwise might have
been. What the film lacks in originality and depth, it more than
makes up for in charm - arguably Catherine Corsini’s most satisfying
film to date.
© James Travers 2008
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