"Bel Ami" Review by Hayes at the Movies

"Bel Ami" Review by Hayes at the Movies

Georges Duroy (Robert Pattinson) rises from penniless clerk to one of the most powerful men in Paris thanks to his manipulation of the city’s most influential women.

We have often seen chronicles of women using their sexuality for personal and professional gain, so it is a refreshing change to see a man doing the same thing on screen. It is also a refreshing change to see Robert Pattinson smile so much, and not sparkle in the sunlight. Bel Ami is adapted from Guy de Maupassant’s 1885 novel of the same name that chronicled his rise through the journalistic ranks.

Pattinson plays a young man who served in the army’s occupation of Algiers. On his return to Paris he finds himself penniless and destitute until a chance encounter with an old friend sets him on the road to wealth. Duroy is given the advice to get in with the wives of influential men and before long he is working for a newspaper – writing about his experiences as a cavalry officer – and is having an affair with Clotilde (Christina Ricci), but this is only the beginning for Georges Duroy. Pattinson is fine in the role of the young social climber, but he looks a little to contemporary to fit in with the period the film is set in. As well as this, Pattinson does not create much depth within the character; Duroy does not appear to have any motivation other than sex and money, even though a political scandal rages around him. There are hints of Dorian Gray about Georges Duroy – he is pretty but evil underneath it all, and has little concern for anything but himself.

Uma Thurman, Christina Ricci and Kirstin Scott Thomas play the women Duroy gets involved with. Thurman plays Madeleine, a woman who appears to be the opposite of Duroy in every way, she is not interested in money or sex – with her new husband anyway – but throws herself into work on the newspaper. Ricci’s portrayal of Clotidle creates a frivolous and socially unaware character, and Scott Thomas’s Madame Rousset is reduced to a snivelling schoolgirl as soon as the gaze of her ‘beautiful boy’ is turned on her. The women have a little more depth than Duroy, but while the audience is told that these women hold all the power, we are rarely given a demonstration of their actual influence.

Bel Ami could have been a great story about how sexual power is used to bring down a government, but instead it is boiled down to a tale about sex without any sensuality and characters that appear to have no connection to one another. The film is beautifully designed, but it appears that the characters are little more than decoration in these beautiful places; such is their lack of substance.

Directors Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod are famed for their work with the theatre, in particular with the company Cheek by Jowl, but it appears that they got lost in the medium of cinema and forgot about the message. Bel Ami looks very pretty, but it lacks the substance that one might expect from a film that encapsulates the power of the media to select and destroy governments.

In all, Bel Ami looks good, sounds good – the soundtrack by Rachel Portman is wonderful – but it lacks the story that could have made it anything more than a vapid but pretty drama. The film is enjoyable, but there is a rich vein of narrative that is waved in front of the audience from time to time, but never tapped. The film is superficially OK, but disappointing.

Source => Hayes at the Movies / Via => Spunk Ransom