documentary mini-review

Naked Ambition (dir. Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch)

Glenn Charlie Dunks

22 Sep 2025 — 1 min read

One of the great things about documentaries can be the way filmmakers often find so many new people and subjects to devote an hour or more of our time to. Take Dennis Scholl and Kareem Tabsch’s Naked Ambition for example, an entertaining if modest documentary about Bunny Yeager. The former beauty queen and model who became one of the most influential photographers of (as they may have called it at the time) the female form, Yeager’s work pushed boundaries in ways that would only really become clear by the time the culture had no more room for her. Among many other achievements, she was pivotal in the now iconic (whether we like it or not) Playboy as well as discovering Bettie Page.

Scholl and Tabsch previously made The Last Resort in 2018 about photographers Andy Sweet and Gary Monroe. I have not seen it (and therefore cannot answer how Kelly Reichardt appears top of the cast list!), but I am now eager to see it after the charming Naked Ambition. Their biography of Yeager is entertaining thanks largely to Konstantia Kontaxis’ swift editing. It’s a brisk film at only a smidge over 70 minutes and would pair well with Mariska Hargitay’s My Mom Jayne from earlier this year considering they are both about famously beautiful pioneers of female sexuality. It obviously does not have the dramatic heft of that movie, which is to be expected. So, while Naked Ambition never quite scales the sort of storytelling heights, and it’s hard not to suspect that there are several chapters of her life that aren’t explored quite as much as they could be, it’s lively and has a nice spark while speaking to ideas that feel relevant for today.

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