Entertainment

No panting for Pattinson picture

Millions of “Twilight” fans have one thing right: Robert Pattinson is a stunningly good-looking man. It’s little trouble to believe Pattinson, as the title character in “Bel Ami,” can coax a woman into bed with a few seconds of sustained eye contact.

What the actor can’t do is convince us that going to bed with him is any more dangerous to a lady’s well-being than ordering dessert. And that’s a big problem when you’re filming Guy de Maupassant’s novel about Georges Duroy — nicknamed Bel Ami for his gorgeous looks — a ruthless climber in Belle Époque Paris who drains women like glasses of absinthe.

Instead of trusting Maupassant’s creation, screenwriter Rachel Bennette and directors Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod decided, fatally, to soften Bel Ami into a brooding male Scarlett O’Hara — a man who’ll never go hungry again, but who happens to have a rather active sex life. Duroy’s scheming becomes a lack of impulse control. His chief motivation, monstrous selfishness, is reduced to being sick and tired of walloping cockroaches in his garret.

Pattinson’s callowness and tendency to play rage as petulance don’t help. When he spies a beautiful woman, his choirboy grin says, “Hey, she’s kinda cute,” not, “Aha, another lamb to the slaughter.” George Sanders, who played Duroy in a far superior 1947 version, could have sent this whelp packing with one half-curl of his upper lip.

The film’s women are the real predators, barely giving Bel Ami time to get his pants back on before they’re proffering another career advancement. As the film pokes along from bedroom to salon and back again, that isn’t nearly as much fun as it sounds. Uma Thurman has rough, perfunctory sex with Pattinson, and the actor’s grimaces make it look like his costume is cutting off his windpipe. Afterward, he mopes around feeling used — and who wants an emasculated Bel Ami? It’s like a twinkly Hannibal Lecter.

Thurman’s as gorgeous as ever, and she’s such slinky fun as the married lady who decides to turn the scantly educated Duroy into a journalist that it’s a shame the movie surrounding her isn’t worthy. Christina Ricci also does better than the script deserves, adding some spirit to her part as the true-hearted woman who loves Bel Ami for his own rotten self. Kristin Scott Thomas has the worst of it, as a matron whose brutal fate plays mostly as wan farce.

“Bel Ami’’ is handsome enough, although the directorial skill runs mostly to careful framing of magnificent bosoms, Pattinson’s included.

When the decision was made to rob Bel Ami of his diabolical cunning, however, the filmmakers made him just another pretty face.