This day can go into history as the day I saw Robert Pattinson’s naked butt for the first time; all thanks to a little flick called Bel Ami based on the book by Guy de Maupassant.
Pattinson’s character, Georges Duroy, is basically a loser. He supposedly is a war veteran and the son of a poor farmer in Normandy. He had come to Paris to make it big. Instead he found himself in a dingy room with only the clothes on his back and very little money to spend. Until one night he decided to go out with his last money and he encounters a man called Forestier, someone who’s apparently a name in the newspaper business. After giving Georges some money to buy evening clothes, Georges shows up at Forestier’s house and meets some very influential women among which Forestier’s wife Madeleine and Rousset’s wife Virginie. He also meets Clotilde, who is also wealthy but not as involved in her husband’s politics as the other two women are.
After Madeleine tells Georges that not the men but the women behind the men are actually ruling the country he starts a campaign of seduction to win all those women over in order to get closer to their husbands. Georges, or Bel Ami as he is first called by Laurine (Clotilde’s daughter), manages to climb the social ladder in this way. But although he thinks he’s being clever, it appears other people are even more so.
Although the movie is mostly about Georges climbing this social ladder by the seduction of wealthy and well-connected ladies, there’s some back story there as well which, unfortunately, wasn’t that worked out. I guess you have to know a thing or two about the French history of the late 19th century. This would probably have slowed the story down too much, I guess.
The theater 
where the movie was shown, was very small, but there were quite some people there, and they were not only women! There were some guys (even without their girls) there as well. There were lots of moments in this movie that were pretty funny in a way that you can’t help but smile or giggle at. There were some times in which the guys even guffawed!
I loved the dialog in this film as well. At one point Virginie shows up at Georges’ and Clotilde’s love nest and begs for him to let her in because she has some news to share with him. After she has shared the news with him, he starts yelling at her and pushing her out the door he says this:
“I used to laugh after I’d had you, to think I’d sent you back to him with my sweat on your skin. Laughing to myself like a fool, when, all the while, I was the one getting fucked.”
Then Georges fights with Madeleine and she says the following:
“I poured my talent into you -I had no conception of the depth of your emptiness. Nothing! There’s nothing there. Nothing but rage. Like a dumb animal. That’s what you are – an animal. I thought I could teach you. What I should have done was train you.”
Brilliant, if you ask me.
At the end, however, I thought it was a shame that I somehow still managed to feel some compassion for the dude. I’d expected a more ruthless, less sympathetic character. For Georges to love Madeleine, made him a redeemable character and for some reason I didn’t like it that much. I did love the fact that Pattinson looked fairly young (even though they seemed to have tried to make him look older) and inexperienced and naïve, especially in the beginning and he learns a few tricks on the way resulting in a fine character development.
But Pattinson is not the only one starring in the film. Madeleine is played by one of my favorite actresses Uma Thurman (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill), Clotilde is played by Christina Ricci, Virginie is played by Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient) en Virginie’s daughter Suzanne is played by Holliday Grainger who had previously starred together with Robert Pattinson in The Bad Mother’s Handbook.
It’s a small film and doesn’t play in a lot of theatres and it won’t be playing for long, I’m afraid. So, if you like period dramas, naked women’s chests, seduction and social climbing by getting your freak on, you should hurry up. Or wait for the DVD to come out.
