Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticIn France, the names Rastignac and Rubempré serve as a kind of shorthand even today — two iconic characters who signify opposite sides of the same vice: Both prominent players in Honoré de Balzac’s expansive “La Comédie Humaine,” the ambitious parvenus are virtual nobodies of vaguely noble extraction who arrive agog in early-19th-century Paris, and compromise their way to the top.
For Rastignac, the strategy actually works to his advantage; not so much for Lucien de Rubempré, whose swift ascent and humiliating fall are dramatically detailed in Balzac’s masterpiece, “Lost Illusions,” laying the roller-coaster track for this sumptuous and surprisingly au courant cinematic retelling.
Read more on variety.com