Les ambitieux (2006)

Julien, a young author of a self-absorbed autobiographical first book, languishes in his provincial bookstore, unable to get it published. A friend arranges a meeting for him with Judith Zahn, the literary director of her father’s publishing house. Still traumatized by what her mother told her—that her father abandoned her as a child—Judith is difficult and brusque. On the day of Julien’s appointment, an elderly woman, once her father’s mistress, tells Judith that he has died and entrusts her with a box of documents about his life as a revolutionary militant. Outraged, Judith throws the woman out. Too agitated to meet Julien, she asks her assistant to see him in her place, pretend to be her, and turn him away. Julien and Judith cross paths as they leave the building, and Julien realizes he has been played. Since her taxi hasn’t arrived, she asks Julien to drop her off at the Comédie-Française, where she is meeting Saint-Clair, a television host of a literary program and also her occasional lover. She has left her father’s archive box in Julien’s car, so he brings it back to her. Finding him attractive, she lures him into bed for a purely physical relationship. One day, Julien finds the story of Judith’s father among her belongings: he died in combat in South America. He secretly takes as many documents as he can, photocopies them, and begins writing a novel based on the life of this man, whom he idealizes, behind the publisher’s back. In the meantime, he runs into Simon, an old friend and a struggling theater man, who makes himself at home with Julien and enthusiastically praises the novel he is working on, having discovered its manuscript under Julien’s bed. Julien shows his manuscript to Judith, who feels betrayed and breaks things off with him violently. Unable to prevent its publication, she asks her friend Saint-Clair to discredit Julien live on his program. Humiliated, Julien flees the set, which boosts sales of his book, a huge success. Simon, wanting to avenge Julien, breaks into Judith’s home and begins to rape her, but then stops and tells her how disgusted he is by her, saying she doesn’t deserve Julien’s love. Shaken and demoralized, Judith sets out to go through the documents in her father’s archive box and discovers that her mother lied to her: her father did not abandon her; her mother prevented him from seeing her. At the end of the film, Julien, downcast, has returned to the little bookstore. One day, a woman walks into the shop.