Les ambitieux (2006) User Reviews

Smooth French literary bedroom comedy

[Chris Knipp · 7/10 · 15 February 2007]

Ambitious/Les ambitieux is a romantic comedy with a Parisian literary twist. Young author Julien (Eric Caravaca) gets an interview with Judith (Karin Viard), a woman editor described as "scary." She goes to bed with him because he's her type, though she hasn't even read the autobiographical novel he wants to get published. Having gained admittance to her fancy apartment, Julien goes through a box she'd left in his car. It contains records showing that Judith's father was a Sixties radical who was killed in a guerrilla movement in Latin America. This seems to be the exciting material he needs to write a more saleable book. The film is full of clever double-crosses but ends with a somewhat soppy reunion. It's entertaining and watchable. Viard has the requisite edge; Caravaca, the right mixture of shy charm and hidden drive.

This reminded me of Emmanuel Bourdieu's Les amitiés maléfiques from last year, which also dealt with jealousy, ambition, and authorship, from a more academic angle, but was more sophisticated and complex. This one is polished but superficial. It moves with a brisk pace and has vivid characters, but it sticks to an easy story-line that leaves no deep impression. And though it gets its laughs, it does so at the cost of never going more than skin deep. As a French online review commented, one wishes Catherine Corsini herself might have been more "ambitious." The images were too dark, but this may have been in part simply due to the fact that we were shown a DVD.

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema showing at Lincoln Center March 3, 4, and 6, and at the IFC Center March 5, 2007. Opened in Paris January 24, 2007. No US distributor.

Don't Ignore This Film

[tsasa198 · 7/10 · 8 March 2007]

"Ambitious" is a little gem of a movie that I seriously hopes gets distribution here in America. It is a breezy comedy about a love affair between people from different sides of the publishing tracks. A darkly human morality tale about our fatal attraction to lifestyles based on deception. And it is something of a screed against spoiled princesses everywhere who disdain real work and instead spend their lives judging others in an attempt to validate their empty souls. It works very well on all these levels which leads to a low calorie good time that leaves you feeling woozy yet pleasant, and completely guilt free (it's subtitled after all!).

The film starts off dealing with the ambitions of a young writer, Julien, who is obsessed with being published. His passion, however, is met with outright apathy when he finally gets a publisher, Judith, to read it. This being France, land of the easy lay, they are soon sleeping together in sin, and things only get crazier from there. Their adulterous affair causes some serious complications (don't they always) as the principles involved have to find ways to shake their significant others/booty calls. It has recently been reported that the brain responds to falling in love the same way it responds to cocaine, so I supposed Julien's irrational behavior during this portion of the film can be somewhat explained. She's a control freak career woman, but he is more than happy to follow her around, puppy dog style. As Julien works on his next book he has to hide the subject from his lover because it is based on her father's diary and he's not about to tell her that. So lying to the girlfriend about the mistress has led directly into lying to the mistress about the book for him. Once he does present her with the book she flips. I would say that he has every right to use her father's story for fodder, but Judith would disagree. However, to deny that his book is based on anything is akin to swimming in quicksand which he finds out the hard way.

Our former lover are soon at war over the book and the politics get nastier and nastier. It is unfortunate that the director feels the need to get all sappy on us at the end. The final scene, with its chase to the train station and its proclamations of love is the main black mark against this otherwise great film. While it does have a strong bohemian sensibility to it, Julien does not get off totally free. His ambitions do lead to him getting his book published and to him winning the girl, but director Catherine Corsini also shows that ambition swings both ways. His successes turn him into a national laughing stock who has to go into hiding just to save face. There is also the character Simon, the serious actor who is so set on making it that he is currently homeless. Late in the game there is a divine scene where he puts his skills to good use and plays a stalker set on raping Judith. It all sounds so mean spirited, and it is, but it is also hilarious. Besides, Judith has it coming, what goes around comes around. It is the best scene in a darn good film. ***1/2

Corsini up to her ambitions

[guy-bellinger · 9/10 · 5 February 2007]

This is the second movie signed Catherine Corsini I have seen and although « Les Ambitieux" has pretty much in common with « La nouvelle Eve » my response to it was wholly different.

If we compare the two films, the common points are blatant. They both revolve around an active thirty something "modern woman", played by the same actress, Karin Viard.

In "Les Ambitieux" like in "La Nouvelle Eve" the heroine has not come to terms with who she actually is and is not likable.

In both stories the setting is Paris and its irritating elite on the one hand and a provincial town of the North East of France (Auxerre in the first, a place in the Côte d'Or department I could not identify more precisely) where life is less exciting and snobbish but more sensible and unsophisticated.

Each time Viard (Camille in the first film/ Judith in the second one) has an affair with a man (Pierre-Loup Rajot/ Eric Caravaca) who is imperfect but who does something useful for the community (a political party organizer/a writer).

In both cases, this viewer was interested and amused but whereas "La nouvelle Eve" was quickly forgotten, I am sure "Les Ambitieux" will leave its mark on me.

I think the main difference lies not in the subject or the characters but in the way Catherine Corsini deals with them. Shallow in "La nouvelle Eve" (at least to my mind, I am aware not everybody will agree), her approach has become deeper in "Les Ambitieux". In the latter film, this is the same Catherine Corsini, but more mature, showing more ability to look deeply into her subject. Or should I say subjects? For the writer-director examines more than one, such as (mentioned at random): what it means to be a free woman, the cruelty of both TV and the publishing world, the consequences of a childhood trauma, political commitment, getting to know who we are after discarding all that is pretenses, excuses and dishonesty. An ambitious programme, which makes "Les Ambitieux" constantly captivating as Corsini lives up to her ambitions. But don't believe this is only an intellectual movie. Not at all. This is also a one of the best romantic comedies I have seen for long and the way true love is found – the hard way to say the least - is very moving.

Is it necessary to say that Karin Viard is wonderful. The range of her acting is amazing and her expressions vary from rage to laughter, from bossiness to fragility, from grumpiness to charm with baffling ease. There are also good performances from Eric Caravaca, excellent as always at expressing the insecurities of his complex character, Jacques Weber who shines as a star TV host and Gilles Cohen in the colorful role of Caravaca's homeless friend.

One of the best French films made for months. Don't miss it.

The last battle

[jotix100 · 8/10 · 2 April 2009]

Lucien, the owner of a bookstore in a small town, has a secret ambition: he wants to be a writer. He has written a novel no one has read yet. He shows the unedited work to one of his friends, Mathieu, who happens to be connected, through his father, to a publishing house in Paris. Mathieu goes a step further, he gets Lucien an interview with a prominent editor, the notorious Judith Zahn.

Unknown to Lucien, Judith has not read the book he submitted to the the firm where she is the star editor, or has any intentions of doing so. Instead, she instructs an assistant to send the aspiring author home. In fact, Judith, was visited just before Lucien's appointment by her late father's lover, Marthe, who wants to give her his personal effects. It is clear Judith is shaken because of the untimely arrival of Marthe; she wants nothing to do with the papers of a father she felt abandoned her.

Things conspire to bring Lucien and Judith together, but their relationship will be a roller coaster because she is a neurotic woman who has been around that rarefied atmosphere of hype and back stabbing so prevalent in those circles, thriving in her role of being impossible. What Judith doesn't realize is that Lucien has an ambitious project in mind, he is secretly writing a fictionalized account of her father's adventurous life as a militant of leftist causes.

We enjoyed this fine film, directed by Catherine Corsini, a new talent that impressed us with her previous work. Ms. Corsini also collaborated with the fine screenplay with Cedric Kahn and Benoit Graffin. The result is a movie that involved this viewer from the start, thanks to the director's light touch in this surprising romantic comedy with a twist.

The best thing in the film is Karin Viard, who also played in "La nouvelle Eve"; her take on Judith is perfect. Ms. Viard gives an intelligent and nuanced account of the editor that is forced to face reality and examine her life. She then realizes she has been living a lie, perpetuated by her own mother who never told her the truth about her father.

Equally excellent is Eric Caravaca, who as Lucien, makes quite an impression. This young actor moves effortlessly under Ms. Corsini's direction. Jacques Weber is the television host that has an interest in Judith. Giles Cohen has a funny role as the down-and-out actor friend of Lucien, who in a way, plays the role that changes Judith and humbles her.

Ms. Corsini will definitely go far because she shows a natural talent for pulling the viewer into the stories she wants to tell him.