From right, Vincent Lacoste and Benjamin Voisin in Lost Illusions (Music Box Films)

A young man believes the world is his oyster, then screams in shock as the world turns around and slides him down its own moist, hungry gullet. That’s a highly reductive deglazing of Lost Illusions, Xavier Giannoli’s lush yet propulsive story of a writer’s rise and fall in 19th-century Paris. Based on the classic novel of manners by Honoré de Balzac, the film draws parallels with tragedies of betrayal and class snobbery like Dangerous Liaisons or Madame Bovary. But a different kind of worldly, modern, and masculine energy drives its tale of an up-and-comer bent on outsmarting others who ends up—tragically—outsmarting himself. 

The story begins in the provinces, where budding poet Lucien (Benjamin Voisin) attaches himself to the local Madame de Bargeton (Cécile de France), an increasingly melancholy observer foreseeing trouble ahead. Lucien’s affair with the noblewoman becomes a little too obvious, and he is forced to flee with her to Paris, where the sights and temptations have him agog (and us as well—Giannoli presents us with an operatic whirl of advertisements, diversions, and ladies of the night).   

Lucien attempts to make his name in the capital, and fittingly the story gets complicated. There’s a parentage and title issue that the proud adventurer wants settled. A laughable attempt at social climbing meets with ridicule from the Madame’s odious cousin (Jeanne Balibar), the doyenne of a set where putting forth one foot incorrectly lands you in high society quicksand. After these humiliations, the penniless aspiring writer finally begins to satisfy his literary ambitions by falling in with a group of journalists. Crooked journalists, to be precise, who take bribes and commit blackmail while behaving like an 19th-century French version of Animal House.

Lost Illusions uncovers a little secret about cynicism: It’s loads of fun. Lucien and his newspaper bad boys love to print hit pieces and fake news. They revel in the rigged system they’ve created and believe they run, chortling over ruined careers, slandered reputations, and bought cheers (or boos) on opening nights at the theater. They party, show off, and flaunt their roles as outsiders while guzzling the best champagne. 

Confident of his own good looks and wit, Lucien has not one but two petty, slightly puffy pretty boys alternately competing with him and egging him on to attack rivals in print, played by pouting Vincent Lacoste and magnetic Xavier Dolan. (Male rivalry is a strong theme here, particularly between Lucien and older men, who slap him, threaten him, and douse him with black ink. Oh, and one of them is Gérard Depardieu, in a small but spiteful role). The only question is which of the frenemies will betray him first, and that’s just one of many comeuppances on the way. Lucien’s appetites and temptations grow, he becomes unwisely involved in politics, and we wait for the overreach, double cross, and downfall we feel is coming. The Madame knew it all along.

Lost Illusions moves fast, but draws the eye with gorgeous draping, lighting, and detail. Like its antihero, the viewer is apt to be seduced by the movie’s maneuvering through decadent pleasures. The narration, a currently unpopular device, helpfully prods and foreshadows the action. Lead actor Voisin, star of François Ozon’s Summer of 85, adeptly inhabits a character who faces the world with opportunism but is also capable of love and sincerity. 

Rich as his film’s style is, Giannoli flips it to convey irredeemable darkness. A scene of a cadaver dumped into a pauper’s grave in the rain is unforgettably chilling and sad. Like other moral tales of its period, Lost Illusions ends on a note of damnation, but it’s been quite a journey up and way down—and an intoxicating one.