Starring: Ben Cross, Ian Charleson, Nigel Havers, Nicholas Farrell, Ian Holm
Director: Hugh Hudson
Running Time: 102 mins
Certificate: 15
Release Date: July 23rd 2012

Robert Pattinson in a drama that’s all about sex and power should be enough to have teenage girls  (and many a gay man) wetting their knickers, although this certainly isn’t a film for twi-hards. Pattinson plays George Duroy, who in 19th Century France leaves the army and heads to Paris to make his fortune. He soon realises that he needs contacts, and that even if he can get one or two of those, no one is simply going to hand him the treasures he wants.

The fact he has few skills would seem an impediment, but what he’s well aware of that he has one thing in his favour, he’s irresistible to women. This starts to become his way into Parisian high society, picking the ladies who can offer him his next step up the ladder. His conquests include the forthright and astute Clothilde (Christina Ricci), the devoted and normally faithful Virginie (Kristin Scott Thomas), and Madeleine (Uma Thurman), a woman who in the modern day would be smashing through the glass ceiling, but in 19th Century France has to settle with being a professional wife whose light must shine through the men she’s with. [Read more…]