Bel Ami

Robert Patterson plays a returned soldier on the make in Belle Epoque Paris via manipulating the city’s most influential and wealthy women (Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas and Christina Ricci). Bel Ami is based on the 1885 French novel of the same name by Guy de Maupassant. Backhanded compliments seem to be coming easily to critics reviewing the directorial debut of Nick Ormerod and Declan Donnellan. “We’ll say this for Pattinson: in the role of lothario Georges Duroy, who gets all of female Parisian society hot under the collar, his stabs at pettiness and vanity are appropriately lunging and blunt, rather than brilliant or polished,” writes Tim Robey for The Telegraph. And this from Variety’s Justin Chang: “The sort of self-styled gentleman who should theoretically be able to stroll into a room and mesmerize everyone in it by sheer force of personality, this Duroy instead seems to be constantly referring to mental notes from Ladykilling for Dummies as he mystifyingly wends his way into the sympathies of three well-married women.

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