The women are all elegant and intelligent, they know the ways of the world, and they know Georges' history. In the course of the film, Georges will seduce all three women, marry one and the daughter of another and prove himself to be a thoroughgoing rotter, cad and bounder. Not only Forestier and his comely wife, Madeleine ( Uma Thurman), but the paper's editor, Rousset ( Colm Meaney), and his influential wife, Virginie ( Kristin Scott Thomas), and the married Clotilde ( Christina Ricci), whose husband does not attend but is also high and mighty. This grants him entry into a dinner party of power couples. He invites Georges to dinner, and when Georges confesses he has no evening-wear, he gives him two gold pieces to buy some. This man is now political editor of a Parisian daily. Good luck strikes the next day, when in a bordello he encounters an old army buddy, Forestier ( Philip Glenister).
To make sure we get the point, the movie contrasts shots of a steamed lobster and Georges' resident cockroach. In his cramped garret, all he has is a crust of bread, a candle stub and resentment. The opening shot shamelessly lifts from Chaplin and countless other sources, as the penniless outcast stares hungrily through a restaurant window at the rich people dining inside. The movie, set in 1890, is based on a Guy de Maupassant novel about Georges Duroy, son of an illiterate peasant who serves in the French army in Algeria and then finds himself in Paris. One can barely accept that a naive high school girl might fall to his strong, silent vampire, but in "Bel Ami," he successfully seduces three of the most powerful beauties in Paris society despite having no talent, no money and no conversation. That mystery involves why this actor, whose default mode is passive brooding, has been cast as a man irresistible to women. "Bel Ami" adds to the aura of mystery that has enveloped Robert Pattinson since the " Twilight" (2008) films.