Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
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.
Bel Ami is a competent but underwhelming adaptation of Maupassant's novel. The story of an amoral social climber using seduction to ascend Parisian society has inherent dramatic interest, but the film flattens much of the novel's satirical bite into a glossy costume drama. Robert Pattinson struggles to fully inhabit the charismatic manipulator Duroy requires, though the supporting cast of Kristin Scott Thomas, Uma Thurman, and Christina Ricci lend credibility. The cinematography captures period Paris adequately without distinction. As an adaptation it adds little new to the source material and feels derivative of superior literary period pieces. The ending lacks the moral weight the story demands, resolving Duroy's arc with insufficient consequence or irony compared to Maupassant's original cynical vision.