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NAKED AMBITION (2025)
Directors: Dennis Scholl, Kareem Tabsch MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:13 Release Date: 9/12/25 (limited) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 11, 2025 Directors Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch might have stumbled upon a potentially fascinating story about valuable art and a family divided by different moral stances. If Naked Ambition is any evidence, the filmmakers don't even seem to have noticed the possibilities of the narrative that's right in front of them. Instead, their approach to the life and career of Bunny Yeager is so straightforward that the talking-head montage at the top basically sums up everything we're about to learn. Yeager's biography is undoubtedly fascinating, since she was model who went behind the camera, a photographer who shot some of the definitive images of the "pin-up model" style, and stood up to a lot of social backlash for being a woman doing all of that during the 1950s. Yeager very well might be one of the most important photographers in the realm of nude modeling and, as social and cultural changes make her photography seem downright tame and tasteful by comparison, an artist worth space and consideration in the history of the medium more generally. Scholl and Tabsch don't really make an argument for either of these ideas. They simply put a bunch of people in front of the camera to state it outright and hope that makes their documentary important enough. What's funny, perhaps, is that Yeager herself, who died in 2014 at the age of 85, didn't even seem to believe any of that. If she was an artist, it was almost by accident, and an interview with a curator at the first museum to put her work on display is revealing in that way. When told her photos would be there, Yeager's first thought was to ask how many of them did the curator think would be sold. He had to explain that none of them would, laughing at the memory. From what we learn of Yeager, she was quite practical. She did, after all, get into modeling and photography in order to earn a living, financially support her family, and live a comfortable life in a well-to-do neighborhood of Miami. There's nothing wrong with that, of course, and honestly, it is genuinely impressive that Yeager found as much success as she did and for as long as she did in this field. In doing so, she photographed some of the more iconic shots of pin-up legend Bettie Page and became the first woman to be a photographer for Playboy. Most of the interviews here do little more than explain Yeager's career and put it in the obvious context that her job was quite controversial at the time. Some others, including model and burlesque performer Dita Von Teese, explain why Yeager's time as a model probably explains why she succeeded as a photographer, and the late Larry King shows up to point out that he knew Yeager and to provide some background on Miami, where he was a radio DJ, at the time. One of the most confounding moments of the documentary is when the filmmakers let King go on for several minutes about a story that has nothing at all to do with Yeager. The entire movie is less than 73 minutes long, and if they need to waste a few those on an unrelated anecdote, it shows how little content they have and how little confidence they seem to possess about the stuff they do. This leads us to the potentially compelling story hidden within it. Throughout the movie, there's a little back-and-forth battle between Yeager's surviving family members about her job, her photos, her legacy, and whether or not they want to be associated with it. On one side is her daughter Cherilu Duval, who doesn't approve of her mother's work and would probably rather her interview here be the end of her connection to it. On the opposing side is Yeager's other daughter Lisa Irwin, who admires what her mother was able to do and wants to ensure that her legacy is preserved. All of this comes to forefront near the end of the documentary, and between the lines, there's even more drama—an archivist whom neither daughter really trusted, an entire collection of photos that have been kept in boxes for decades, a significant amount of money to be made from all of it. By the way, Scholl and Tabsch have interviewed all of the participants in this battle for the rights to and use of Yeager's work, so it's not as if Naked Ambition doesn't have the access to tell this potentially juicy story. It's right there for the taking but ends up being a brief postscript in a decidedly dull and repetitive biographical approach. Copyright © 2025 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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