L'ascension

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.

Really loved this cute movie and the main actor is amazingly likeable.

I just hope viewers won't think that it's easy to reach the top of Mt. Everest and foolishly go there.

With his on-off romance with Nadia going nowhere, Samy promises to prove his love to her by climbing Everest. It's not the normal thing to do for a young Senegalese-French guy from a deprived Parisian suburb. Particularly since he's never climbed anything higher than the stairs to the top of his apartment block. But with unexpected determination, he first finds a tour package (at 40,000) and then even more unexpectedly gets the financial backing of a local radio station.

On his arrival on Kathmandu, things look bleak. Samy has packed some pretty inappropriate things, it's quickly apparent that he knows nothing and the group leader seems brusque and unsympathetic. But he does find a kindred spirit in Johnny le sherpa, and he does seem to manage to keep smiling. Will that be enough?

The film executes its simple formula beautifully. Anything that is lacking in nuance is made up for by the film's warm heart. All the acting is strong, particularly from Ahmed Sylla as Samy and Umesh Tamang as Johnny and the relationships feel believable. Apart from a few references to pot smoking, this is a good family movie.

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.

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.