"Bel Ami" Review by Daily Record (UK)

"Bel Ami" Review by Daily Record (UK)

SOMETIMES an actor’s star power goes a long, long way. While Bel Ami looks, feels and smells like a period drama deserving to go straight to DVD, it’s got Twilight’s Robert Pattinson in it.

Which means we’re obliged to watch him attempt the metamorphosis from teen idol to “serious actor”. And it’s not pretty.

Best known as drippy vampire Edward Cullen, he plays former soldier George Duroy who, down on his luck, is taken in by an old compatriot in 1920s Paris.

Given a job on the local paper, George starts tearing through the bedrooms of high society, getting intimate with the young – and married – Clotilde (Christina Ricci), his editor’s missus (Uma Thurman) and Madam Walter (Kristin Scott Thomas) who’s wed to the newspaper’s dastardly proprietor (Colm Meaney).

And as the clouds of war gather between France and Morocco, so do the emotional battles back home, as one woman after another discovers he’s cheated. Are they so innocent?

The story is based on celebrated French writer Guy de Maupassant’s second novel but feels like a yarn Somerset Maugham would have thrown into the wastebasket.

Amid the chintzy Parisian apartments, cigar-chomping men and laborious parlour-room chatter, there isn’t much of a story but, in brandy-swilling card games, deals are brokered and the class system is laid bare.

We don’t care about George and we don’t care about his conquests and it’s hard to see how such a pale waif could send so many thighs aquiver.

He looks like he needs a good wash.

As for Pattinson this most certainly isn’t the stepping stone away from the Twilight series. While he was a revelation in the underrated Remember Me, his isn’t a performance to be proud of.

Red eyed and unshaven, R-Patz spends two hours grimacing, sneering and smiling secretly to himself.

Are we meant to sympathise or admire him as he seduces the wives of the great and the good?

For three quarters of the running time we don’t know. For the rest, we don’t care.

Source => Daily Record / Via => Spunk Ransom