Guy de Maupassant’s novel Bel Ami is a taut, economic
commentary on the seduction of the social ladder and what we’ll do to climb it.
Specifically, it captures the debauchery and inhibition of 19th century Paris
and the laissez faire nature of its citizens. I suppose that gives good reason
to why it has been adapted to the stage and screen no less than eight times.
The 2012 film adaptation, starring Robert Pattinson, doesn’t quite capture all
of that… or almost any of it…
Robert Pattinson plays Georges Duroy, a journalist looking
to make it big and pull himself up from the lower class; he doesn’t care what
he has to do to accomplish this. He seduces women and… well, he mainly seduces
women, and that‘s basically the movie. Pattinson is an interesting dilemma. On
one hand, he seems to be a decent actor, sometimes. On the other hand, Twilight
exists. Throughout the bulk of Bel Ami, he’s kind of just there, and
this isn’t The Libertine where Johnny Depp can just be “there” and have
the movie be interesting. Robert Pattinson isn’t Johnny Depp--Hell, he isn’t
even Heath Ledger in Casanova. Really, the most comparable person is
Eric Bana in The Other Boleyn Girl; the problem is, The Other Boleyn
Girl wasn’t really about Henry VIII, so the film could afford to have
Bana’s performance be one of mere presence. Bel Ami is 100% about
Georges Duroy, so when Pattinson delivers a line flatly, reacts dully, or even
just looks bored, the film suffers greatly. With that said, there are a handful
of moments where he does breathe some life into the character, and frankly,
that is the only life the movie has.
Yes, the film also features Christina Ricci, Uma Thurman,
and Kristin Scott Thomas, and I very much enjoyed seeing Christina Ricci naked,
again; but that’s ostensibly all they are: sex objects. Hey, I’m fine with the
idea of Christina Ricci being a sex object, but that’s not what you want from a
movie--unless it’s porn; in that case, stay out of Fred Willard’s splatter
zone.
Beneath the dullness and banality, there is an intriguing
subtext, and it does feel like they at least tried to honor Maupassant’s novel.
Every single person in this film is simultaneously married, cheating, and angry
about it all, which does highlight the hypocrisy of jealousy within infidelity.
It’s just laid on about eight inches too thick. I would estimate at least a
dozen times in this movie where Christina Ricci gets upset with Robert Pattinson
about seeing other women… yet she’s married. That was an interesting commentary
on the absurdity of seduction, lust, and amour, but the movie is a one-trick
pony; that’s all it has, and instead of doing its one trick really well once,
it does it badly several times. If you want to see that plot device as a
reflection of Duroy’s attempts to climb the social ladder, you can, but the
movie doesn’t do enough to present that. You’re basically just given a story of
him fucking a series of women and symbolically fucking himself into amorality,
which is difficult, given the social mores of 19th century Paris.
It’s really a shallow movie that could have easily been
deeper, if they had only focused more on the fact that Duroy was climbing the
ladder and less on how nobody could keep it in their pants, yet everyone was
really upset about it. Instead, it’s basically just the whole Kristen
Stewart/Robert Pattinson shit--on film. If you want to see that, or if you
would like to see Robert Pattinson’s disinterested, bare ass unceremoniously
thrusting in the general direction of women, then I guess you should check this
out. Otherwise, there’s really no reason. Watch The Libertine, or Casanova,
or Marie Antoinette, or find one of the other adaptation’s of this novel
and watch that; it’ll probably be better. If you’re just interested in seeing
Christina Ricci naked, watch Black Snake Moan, which also happens to
actually be a great movie.
-John
