In Bel Ami Robert Pattinson feels stilted and the sex is tame
This trifling English revival of Bel Ami feels rather pleased with itself, while Robert Pattinson is wrong for the role of ruthless cad Georges Duroy.
Guy de Maupassant’s racy novel about the social climbing of an uppity scoundrel in Paris was scandalous in 1885 and has been made into several movies since, including one porn version. And yet this trifling English revival feels rather pleased with itself – as if it’s puncturing pomposity and ripping bodices for the first time.
Acclaimed theatre directors Declan Donnelan and Nick Omerod make a fitfully handsome feature debut but muddle the tone – what should be a sprightly chamber piece is sombrely scored as if for a full orchestra.
The casting is rather tone-deaf, too. A commercial choice he may be but Robert Pattinson, while gamely trashing his teen idol cred as ruthless cad Georges Duroy, is still wrong for the role. As the otherwise talentless Duroy demonstrates a flair for affairs with well-connected women, Pattinson feels stilted, the sex tame.
Why beautiful women such as Clotilde (Christina Ricci) lavish affection, and powerful men attention, on a little boy lost with the pallor and manner of an undertaker is never adequately explained – perhaps Twilight was big back then, too. More damagingly, why modern audiences should care about the rascally hack’s fate is equally unclear – Duroy can be a prism for social satire but never a sympathetic protagonist.
The only joke of note is in recasting Dangerous Liaisons’s ingénue Uma Thurman as the worldly society wife who takes Duroy under her wing. Her presence will only make you pine for the Vicomte de Valmont all the more.
Source => Metro UK / Via => Spunk Ransom
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