Lost Illusions review – Balzac adaptation is period-drama perfection

Benjamin Voisin and Cécile de France star in a superb costume coming-of-age story for the Netflix generation

Xavier Giannoli brings his natural force and flair to this rake’s-progress spectacular, a blue-chip French costume drama adapted from Honoré de Balzac’s 1837 novel about the poetic youth who come to the big city with provincial idealism and callow sensitivity, only to replace them with ambition, lust, corruption and (worst of all) journalism. An earlier generation might have shrugged at this as cinéma du papa, and modern audiences might smirk at the kind of decorative movie that features archly in the opening credits of Netflix’s French TV comedy Call My Agent! But it’s acted with such terrific panache that not enjoying it is impossible.

Our hero is Lucien Chardon, pertly played by Benjamin Voisin (one of the lovers in François Ozon’s recent drama Summer of 85). Lucien is a humble printer’s assistant and smalltown poet, who styles himself “du Rubempré” after his well-connected mother; his handsome face and ardent verses capture the heart of local aristocrat, Louise de Bargeton (Cécile de France), with whom Benjamin is soon having an affair. A ferocious confrontation with Louise’s splutteringly cuckolded husband means that Lucien decides to make a clean break and head for Paris where, with Louise’s help, he is quite certain his poetic talent will make him the toast of the town. But his maladroit manners and absurdly misjudged new clothes embarrass Louise in front of her grand friends, including the cunning Marquise d’Espard (Jeanne Balibar) and a fashionable author who is to become Lucien’s mortal frenemy: Nathan d’Anastazio, played by that notable director and talented actor Xavier Dolan.

Lucien is reduced to near-poverty, and to earn a sou, starts writing articles for the scurrilous liberal press; he is under the editorship of jeering hack Lousteau (Vincent Lacoste), and saturnine proprietor Finot (Louis-Do de Lencquesaing), who openly sell articles and good and bad reviews for cash. Lucien soon becomes a big celebrity in this nasty new trade, induces blearily cynical publisher Dauriat (Gérard Depardieu) to take his poems, and falls in love with actor Coralie (Salomé Dewaels), buying good reviews and cheering crowds for his paramour. It cannot end well. Nor does it.

The metropolitan conceit and genial contempt for anything that is not for sale lends a heavy cognac flavour of glib cynicism to the story, but the film’s galloping momentum is exhilarating, and there is broad comedy in its elision of carnal desire and social ambition. Giannoli, like Balzac, invites us to see that the loss of illusions is neither entirely deliberate nor completely accidental. And it is twofold: first Lucien jettisons his flowery poetic ideals in favour of money and status; and then, painfully, throws away the delusion that this sellout was ever really going to do him any good. He admires a line in the new novel from his rival Nathan: “I now stop hoping and start living,” which is to be this story’s epitaph. And when does this moment come? When hoping turns to living? Perhaps never – or perhaps at the very start of our lives.