Rob showed a lot of range in the 5 new Bel Ami scenes and Alt Film Guide is the first non-fandom site out of the gates with positive remarks (excerpted):
Set in a church, in the first scene Pattinson's ambitious ex-soldier Georges Duroy plays (very determinedly) a game of seduction with Older Woman Kristin Scott Thomas. In the second, Pattinson convincingly plays a drunk Duroy in a cabaret. That's when he runs into the obnoxious publisher Charles Forestier, who will inadvertently assist Duroy in his ascent in Parisian society.Source: AltFilm
The third scene is set at the Forrestier dinner table. The issue of class is all too apparent — Duroy doesn't know which knife to use — and so are the various seduction games despite all the surface talk about life in the desert and French colonial politics. Even though Pattinson, Christina Ricci, and Uma Thurman are perfectly fine — Pattinson's facial expressions, a mix of shyness and self-assertion, are particularly impressive — the scene-stealer here is Scott Thomas: "I was told that the [desert] sands … sing?"
In the fourth scene, Duroy performs a different sort of seduction, as a little girl falls for her playful "bel ami." The brief follow-up scene features Pattinson/Duroy and his conquest Ricci/Clotilde de Marelle in his dingy apartment.
Though a low-budget production, Bel Ami — as its trailer (and even its poster) promised — is gorgeous to look at.
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