Robert Pattinson cuts a suave figure in “Bel Ami.” He’s part rogue, part dashing man about town. With the film premiering in Berlin this week, a new clip has gown viral with almost 12 minutes of the movie–all if it about Rob.
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The adaptation of Guy de Maupassant’s 19th century novel about Rob’s character, George Duroy, is significant because the role is a marked departure from almost anything else Rob has done, including the “Twilight” series. He plays an unsavory anti-hero, a “penniless” ex-soldier who is determined to claw his way up French society by seducing the wives of powerful men.
He overflows with lust, desire and ambition. Rob is back on the promotion trail for the film. He’ll be making stops at the Berlin Film Festival and likely the Glasgow Film Festival in Scotland.
“Bel Ami” will hold its world premiere in Berlin on Feb. 17, and will also screen at the Glasgow festival, which runs from Feb. 16 to Feb. 26. Christina Ricci, Uma Thurman and Kristen Scott Thomas also star. Thurman and Ricci are scheduled to be in Berlin as well.
“My Bel Ami guy doesn’t have a conscience,” he told the Edinburgh Herald newspaper in Scotland. “Most fictional characters are driven by some target, but he is like a reverse character. He’s so content to do nothing and thinks everything should just be given to him,” he says, explaining his character.
“But if someone slights him, or directs any insult at him, the most overwhelming energy grabs him and he turns into this absolute devil who will do anything.”
The clip, nearly 12 minutes long, opens with Rob’s character stalking Kristin Scott Thomas’s character Madame Walter, a wealthy married society woman, whom he’s trying to seduce. He follows her to a church where she’s gone to pray.
The scene is tense and erotic as Duroy makes his intentions known. She tries to avoid him, flees to another more secluded part of the church and falls on her knees to pray.
“Is there any hope for me,” Duroy says, placing his hand on her shoulder. She can no longer resist. She kisses his hand and the fall into an passionate embrace. “You are trying to seduce me in a church,” she says, before running off.
From there, the clip cuts to what might be a familiar scene because it’s been in an earlier trailer. Duroy meets his friend in a bar. But the scene is longer and shows Rob eyeing prostitutes. His sexual magnetism is evident as the ladies eye him lasciviously.
The next scene is the dinner, where he meets Uma Thurman’s character Madeleine Forestier, the wife of his colleague from the Army Georges Forestier, who takes Duroy under his wing in Paris. Then there is an extended look at Duroy charming Clotilde de Marelle, played by Christina Ricci.