L'ascension

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.

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

This was an easy to watch, lighthearted French film about a guy from a housing estate climbing Mt Everest. It took a while for me to get into it, and a big part of the reason I did, was only because of my interest in Mt Everest.

Mt Everest and the Nepalese culture are really the stars of the film here. I found it hard to like the main character for the first half of the film. He came across quite insulting and disrespectful to others and a lot of the humour didn't stick.

I am, however, a sucker for a good hiking or mountain movie. The Climb has a lot of heart and it's light, breezy nature was kind of infectious - albeit adding an unrealistic vibe to things. It was a bit too cheesy in parts.

If you're after a light and easygoing French film with spectacular scenery, then this might be for you. I'll probably have forgotten about it in a week though.

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.

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.