Bel Ami

CinemaSerf5/10

May 24, 2023

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Now I don't know about you, but I always thought that Freddie Stroma ("Cormac") from the "Half Blood Prince" (2009) was the hottest eye-candy to befriend "Harry Potter" so I never really got all the fuss about the pallid and relatively charm-free Robert Pattison as he became an Hollywood star. In this, admittedly stylish looking film, he is a poverty stricken would-be Lothario who manages to get himself a job on the local "La Vie Française" newspaper thanks to the creative help of "Mme. Forestiere" (Uma Thurman) and her husband who edits the thing. Success goes to his head a bit and soon he is sleeping his way through Paris society caring nothing for the women - notably "Mme. Rousset" (easily the best performance of the film from Dame Kristin Scott Thomas) and the vulnerable and loving "Clothilde" (Christina Ricci). Gradually his reputation starts to impede his flexibility, his erstwhile colleagues sicken of him and his luck starts to change? Is he going to end up on an absinthe-soaked floor somewhere, or has he now the guile to survive - thrive, even? It's interesting, I suppose, to tell a story from the perspective of a man who sleeps his way to the top - but this one is really rather one-dimensional. Pattison is no great shakes an an actor, his performance is completely devoid of charisma and there is very little chemistry here - on any level - to sustain the rather repetitive and depressing thread of their stories. They are all rather unpleasant, duplicitous, individuals who would cheat as easily as breathe. Holliday Grainger's entry onto the scene merely serves to speed it even more rapidly on the skids from which it just never really recovers. This is just poor, sorry.