Lost Illusions

The only way to avoid a disastrous debut is to shell out a higher fee to the provocateur in return for applause and a standing ovation... Lost Illusions deserves this rave simply based on its commendable merits.

Xavier Giannoli’s film is hilarious and always moving with vivid colors and rapid-fire narration that in another movie might feel heavy-handed but here is a guiding force that gives a fascinating quasi-history lesson.

Lost Illusions vividly depicts a time when life was more hands-on, when writing with pen and ink stained the skin and disgruntled audiences hurled actual rotten tomatoes at performers.

Balzac cast a wide net, yet Giannoli covers the ground effortlessly. Much of the film’s vitality flows from Vivaldi, Schubert and the other classical composers he uses to find the narrative’s pace and rhythms.

Giannoli knows exactly which buttons to push and for how long. He takes what could have been a fussy adaptation of a dusty tome and turns it into something hugely entertaining.

Lost Illusions is sumptuous yet piercing, an expertly plotted social-relations saga of the kind that once typified prestige Hollywood cinema, and it dives into moral quandaries rather than dispensing easy bromides.

It may not be innovative, but it is certainly grand.

Students of French history and literature, particularly the post-Napoleonic/Bourbon Restoration era and the works of Honoré Balzac, are likely to find Lost Illusions of interest.

Xavier Giannoli’s truly sumptuous adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s novel Lost Illusions is prescient, modern, and yet thoroughly grounded in its time.

Anchoring his period drama with a killer cast, Giannoli expresses his desire to mix lyrical and satirical spark, but he draws the film out and comes nowhere near Balzac’s serial novel.