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.

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.

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.

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.

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.