adonis98-743-186503 A chronicle of a young man's rise to power in Paris via his manipulation of the city's wealthiest and most influential women. Bel Ami is for sure not the greatest film i've ever seen but i was surprised by the whole movie the performances were pretty good by Pattinson, Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas and Christina Ricci everyone did a great job and i liked the whole plot with Georges being basically a horrible person and using all those women just to get their money and i get it why he used the 2 of them but Ricci actually loved the guy and he treated her the same. Now do i think that this film deserves the ratings it gets? No but i don't blame the reviewers to be honest with you.

trimmerb1234 Reading other reviews I think this was an advantage - I brought no baggage, had no expectations.Although set in Paris in the 1890s, the theme - handsome poor young man on the make via the wives of powerful men - is surely universal and timeless. If you have an inkling of what is involved then I think the story, the direction and the performances appear to be in perfect synchronism.There can be few, if any, attractive women(and later, wives), who have not been "hit on" by a charming young chancer trying his luck: the bell-boy, the courier, the pool attendant. Indeed for the three attractive leading ladies in the cast, this aspect of the roles perhaps did not require any great leap of imagination and each was excellent. But Robert Pattinson, I thought, brought special talents: the ability to transform himself, even in manner of walking, from coarsened penniless former soldier, desperately grateful for the slightest break, to smooth coldly determined scheming operator. Also Pattinson has a perhaps unique talent for subtle changes of expression including gloating and coldly observed horror and brutality. Unsurprising that he is associated with vampire roles.There is horror and extreme brutality - not gore-fest but psychological in the film. Kristen Scott-Thomas, the faithful, pious, virtuous middle-aged wife goes against all her principles for the believed love of the handsome young seducer. The sudden revelation that she has sacrificed absolutely everything she values to find that, worse than mere betrayal, she has been used, used just as a temporary stepping stone to get access her daughter - and even that just as a way of accessing her husband's wealth and power. That she had not, as she fervently believed, entered an Indian summer of mutual passion and adoration but a permanent winter of loneliness, disgrace, public humiliation and alienation from those closest to her. There is an terrible piling high of utter disaster on a hitherto content good woman. The effect is rightly portrayed as being utterly shattering. One could understand that she would have rather have suffered a gory death than to have learned these awful truths. Pattinson's vampyric expression communicates something more than just unconcern and lack of regret. Earlier he had sat with another wife who has become his lover at the bedside of the fretting dying husband who fully knew of their affair and vainly hoped to live and confound both doctors and his wife's lover's vaunting ambitions.Our young hero does shed a tear for the husband who once was good to him. He is not a psychopath, he does have some residual feelings but his ruthless ambition easily over-rides any qualms. What Guy de Maupassant additionally provided is a powerful story of rot, corruption and collusion between politicians and a newspaper owner. It is a story for our times, perhaps for all times.

James Hitchcock "Bel Ami", set in the Paris of the 1880s, is centred upon a young man named Georges Duroy, the "bel ami", or "handsome friend", of the title. When we first meet him, Duroy is a former soldier, now employed as a badly-paid office clerk. A chance meeting with an old army comrade leads to an offer of job as a journalist on an influential newspaper and an entry into Parisian high society. Duroy now schemes to improve his social and financial status, a process which generally involves seducing as many society ladies, often the wives of his friends, as possible. I was surprised to note that the budget for the film was as low as €9 million, around £7 million and absolute peanuts by Hollywood standards. Certainly, it does not quite have the rich look of many "heritage cinema" productions, but it captures the look of late nineteenth century Paris quite adequately, and I do not think that the small budget was the reason why the film does not come off. The real reasons go deeper. The main one is the miscasting of Robert Pattinson in the main role. I know that, following his success in the "Twilight" series, Pattinson is regarded as something of a heartthrob, but he does not show much evidence of it here. He comes across as completely inert and lacking in the sexual charisma which one would expect such a successful Lothario to possess. To be fair to Pattinson, however, he does not get a lot of help from the script, which makes Duroy seem mean-spirited and cynical. It is hard to like a film with such a blackguard for its main character. Of the other actors the best is probably Christina Ricci as Clotilde de Marelle. Clotilde is a young, unhappily married woman who makes the fatal mistake of falling in love with Duroy, who can never be faithful to her because he is, of course, passionately in love with himself. I have admired Kristin Scott Thomas in some of her earlier films but here, as Virginie Rousset, another of Duroy's conquests, she seemed too old for the part. Adaptations of nineteenth and early twentieth century novels, a genre which has become known as "heritage cinema", have played an important role in the cinema over the last few decades, particularly in Britain and France but also in other countries. The style has become particularly associated with the work of Merchant-Ivory, but there have been many other important works in the genre such as Schlesinger's "Far from the Madding Crowd", Losey's "The Go-Between", Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence" and Terence Davies's "The House of Mirth". Not all films made in this style, however, are of the same quality; at its worst heritage cinema can be beautiful but static and lifeless; Charles Sturridge's "Where Angels Fear to Tread", a piece of fake Ivory, being a case in point. With a plot that does not flow easily, an implausible storyline and a hero who comes across as completely charmless, even though he is supposed to use his charm as a weapon, "Bel Ami" is another example of heritage cinema at its worst. I have never read the novel by Guy de Maupassant, so cannot pass judgement on its merits as a work of literature, but I'm afraid to say that this adaptation did not exactly fill me with an immediate desire to rush out and buy a copy. 4/10

SnoopyStyle It's 1890 Paris. Georges Duroy (Robert Pattinson) is a poor former soldier returning from Algeria. He reconnects with fellow soldier Charles Forestier (Philip Glenister) who is married to socialite Madeleine Forestier (Uma Thurman). He is introduced to her friends Clotilde de Marelle (Christina Ricci) and Virginie Rousset (Kristin Scott Thomas). Virginie's husband (Colm Meaney) is the editor of the newspaper La Vie Française where Georges gets a job publishing his war diaries in the paper.Pattinson is given so little to work with at the start and he does so little with it. The movie moves so quickly with him thrown in like catnip to these women. It's like the story is using a shortcut to get to a point which is utterly undeserved. The production is worthy. The actors involved are mostly first class. However Pattinson is underdeveloped. He is more like a child where a charming leading man should be. He is unsteady which I doubt those women would find sexy. He needs to be more confident or maybe darker and more mysterious. Everybody else is doing solid work. Other than some pretty production and some solid actors around Pattinson, there isn't much to recommend.