Bel Ami (2012)

You know when you go and watch a film and you expect to dislike it, but you cling to some hope that you are wrong. This was one of those films. On the one hand you've got the charisma vacuum that is Robert Pattinson, the man who has less personality on screen than he does in real life, which really is saying something. On the other hand you have a trio of women who I actually really like. Kristin Scott Thomas, who always seems to try and take on interesting projects and as such I really respect her, Uma Thurman, who I like mainly, but not solely, for her work with Tarantino, and Christina Ricci, who I think is a great young actress and who I hope will get back to making good films soon. So I threw caution to the wind and hoped that 3 actors I liked could trump one I did not. Unfortunately I was wrong.

The film follows Pattinson, who having just returned from the war is in Paris, where he is trying to make his fortune, and failing. He encounters an old army buddy who invites him home for dinner where he will meet a man who can give him a job. That he does, but here he also meets three women, one is his buddies wife, one is the man offering him a jobs wife and another is just someone elses wife. He is told that the real power in Paris lies with the women rather than the men, as the men all listen to their wives. As such he begins to work his way into the women's lives and indeed their bedrooms as he begins elicit affairs with each of them in order to get what he wants. The main problem, he basically ruins all their lives. YAY?

With the lack of charisma coupled with quike frankly playing an absolute arse of a man, you not only don't care if anything bad happens to him, you end up actively wanting it to in order to speed up the ending of the film if you can. The story never really had much appeal, but as the film goes on, my interest in it began to diminish even more. All he seems to do is have sex with women, never really do any work (yet still somehow get money) and try his hand at politics where he fails miserably.

Added to the fact that this is simply a bad story (or at least told in a bad way) is the message that this send out to people that in order to succeed in life you have to treat everyone around you like tools in your own little game. I am not by any means saying that every film must focus on people who are kind and loving and treat everyone nicely, that would result in really boring films after a while. But what I am saying is that when a film like this has no critical merit, and a star who appeals to a young audience, to have a film where he quite literally gets everything he wants with no price to pay himself (besides having to be Robert Pattinson) you send out a really bad and dangerous message.

So this film fails on every level, it's not interesting, even a trio of great actresses can't save it, and I found it morally repugnant to boot. Avoid!