El ascenso

It was a long time ago since i droped so many tears during a movie. Fantastic film.

This is a lovely simple film full of heart-warming moments and warmth. It isn't groundbreaking or particularly profound, but the protagonist give an excellent and very endearing performance and the film is well-paced and neatly put together.

An enjoyable enough fish-out-of-water tale of a young black man from a Parisian ghetto attempting to climb mount Everest. There's some beautiful cinematography of the mountains ... but the fact that it's presented as a based on a "true story" when the narrative bears hardly any resemblance to the real life events undermines the success of the movie. I would imagine it makes serious mountaineers cringe.

For those who think that French cinema is filled with nothing but pretentious bores, I would suggest that they take a look at this particular effort. Although officially based on a true story, it doesn't take long to realize that a lot of liberties were taken to make the movie more appealing and commercial. Sometimes these changes, such as making the protagonist incredibly naïve about what he will be facing, are a little lame and annoying. Fortunately, most of the movie does work pretty well. The incidents of comedy are low key but charming. Practically every character with a substantial part is very likable, especially the central character, who you will root for every step of the way. The movie also looks very nice, with expert cinematography and actual filming in Nepal. All this ends up making the movie a sweet surprise, one that you'll remember for a long time afterwards. And it will probably have you looking for more examples of French populist cinema. The movie is on Netflix, so catch it there.

I often find contemporary French cinema difficult to watch, but L'Ascension is different, I loved this film. It is charming, pertinent, and the whole fish-out-of-water thing (A young Franco-Africain man who has never been out of his Parisian ghetto promises a woman he's dating that he will climb mount Everest for her) is done really well. Add to this spectacular scenery in Nepal and Chamonix (faux Everest :-), and I think one has to be pretty fussbudget not to enjoy this film.