Bel Ami (2012)
Overview
Georges Duroy travels through 1890s Paris, from cockroach ridden garrets to opulent salons, using his wits and powers of seduction to rise from poverty to wealth, from a prostitute’s embrace to passionate trysts with wealthy beauties, in a world where politics and media jostle for influence, where sex is power and celebrity an obsession.
Cast
Robert Pattinson
Georges Duroy
Uma Thurman
Madeleine Forestier
Christina Ricci
Clotilde de Marelle
Kristin Scott Thomas
Virginie Walters
Colm Meaney
Monsieur Rousset
Philip Glenister
Charles Forestier
Holliday Grainger
Suzanne Rousset
Natalia Tena
Rachel the Prostitute
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CinemaSerf
Now I don't know about you, but I always thought that Freddie Stroma ("Cormac") from the "Half Blood Prince" (2009) was the hottest eye-candy to befriend "Harry Potter" so I never really got all the fuss about the pallid and relatively charm-free Robert Pattison as he became an Hollywood star. In this, admittedly stylish looking film, he is a poverty stricken would-be Lothario who manages to get himself a job on the local "La Vie Française" newspaper thanks to the creative help of "Mme. Forestiere" (Uma Thurman) and her husband who edits the thing. Success goes to his head a bit and soon he is sleeping his way through Paris society caring nothing for the women - notably "Mme. Rousset" (easily the best performance of the film from Dame Kristin Scott Thomas) and the vulnerable and loving "Clothilde" (Christina Ricci). Gradually his reputation starts to impede his flexibility, his erstwhile colleagues sicken of him and his luck starts to change? Is he going to end up on an absinthe-soaked floor somewhere, or has he now the guile to survive - thrive, even? It's interesting, I suppose, to tell a story from the perspective of a man who sleeps his way to the top - but this one is really rather one-dimensional. Pattison is no great shakes an an actor, his performance is completely devoid of charisma and there is very little chemistry here - on any level - to sustain the rather repetitive and depressing thread of their stories. They are all rather unpleasant, duplicitous, individuals who would cheat as easily as breathe. Holliday Grainger's entry onto the scene merely serves to speed it even more rapidly on the skids from which it just never really recovers. This is just poor, sorry.
