L'ascension

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.

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 really enjoyed it, i mean even though it's supposed to be based on the true story of Nadir, but this movie has a different twist and the motivation and the purpose if climbing Mount Everest is totally different, but still very nice and lovely movie to watch and the Main character Ahmad is so lovely and makes it so natural.

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.

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.