"Bel Ami" Review by Birmingham Post (UK)

"Bel Ami" Review by Birmingham Post (UK)

Like Dame Judi Dench in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, the casting of The English Patient star Kristin Scott Thomas in this movie should have been perfect for mature viewers.

Especially those with fond memories of the French intrigue of Dangerous Liaisons (1988), the story of passion and betrayal between bored aristocrats.

Bel Ami, adapted from the (second) 1885 novel of the same name by French author Guy de Maupassant, is a good-looking alternative that is simply not in the same class.

Here, Georges Duroy (Robert Pattinson) is an ill-educated social climber from a poor background, but newly aware and ambitious enough to appreciate how Paris is ‘filthy with money, rotten with it’ and where ‘even the whores are getting rich’.

Potential bed-mates Clotilde de Marelle (Christini Ricci), Virginie Walters (Kristin Scott Thomas) and Madeleine Forestier (Uma Thurman) all look lovely. But having Robert Pattinson as the leader of spark creation is a bit like watching a ‘failed soldier, barely literate’ man trying to make potions when he didn’t have chemistry and physics in his options.

The London-born 25-year-old was well cast in the Twilight series because his teeth are fangy and he’s like the colour black – skilled at soaking things up without giving much back in return.

Alas! Although Pattinson is a good-looking lad and the perfect choice for a bit of revolving-door trouser dropping, there’s still no sign of any Oscar-worthy genes maturing between his ears.

And, when he bares his shoulders, he is less a honey-glazed beefcake, but more a beef tomato salad – only without any of the authentic French dressing this film so badly needs.

Miss Scott Thomas, Cornish born but with French-British nationality, is rather wasted on Mr Pattinson.

In real life she’s more than twice his age and should have devoured him for breakfast.

Having starred in Dangerous Liaisons all those years ago, Uma Thurman must just have fancied returning to the same territory against all the best advice not to.

Miss Ricci is a real kitten, but she looks so like Sarah Brightman that she invoked unwelcome thoughts of Andrew Lloyd Webber swooping down to audition his next Phantom.

Still, the sets and costumes in Bel Ami look the part and, in Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, the film even has two debut directors for the price of one. But Bel Ami’s lack of pace highlights their inexperience, which an almost non-stop violin score seems to be trying too hard to compensate for.

Although the dialogue is structured so that the actors can breathe and we can listen (save for Pattinson’s unintelligible first line), Bel Ami feels rather flat-footed as a drama, when it should really be nimble.

And it is too often rather dour when it should be full of exquisite mischief as per Dangerous Liaisons.

Or even last year’s little seen hoot of a Richard E Grant movie, First Night.

Source => Birmingham Post / Via => Spunk Ransom