Ah, to be a critic! In this media-snarky world, it is reassuring that "Lost Illusions," the great 19th Century European realist novel by Honoré de Balzac, was exceedingly prescient to our current age of social media — and how reputations can be won and lost, or bought and sold.
Xavier Giannoli's sumptuous adaptation, which was nominated for 14 César Awards (French Oscars) and won seven, is, all about, "ink, paper, and the love of beauty." The film charts the rise and subsequent fall of Lucien (Benjamin Voisin), a 20-year-old poet from Angoulême. He writes poems for Louise de Bargeton (Cécile de France), whom he loves, but her husband's influence (read: threat) forces Lucien to leave for Paris. It is in the city, where he is out of his depths, that his life truly begins.
