Robert Pattinson was looking to break away from his image as Edward Cullen in the Twilight movies when he visited the Berlinale in 2012. At that point, four of the five Twilight features had been released, but Pattinson was already setting a new course, playing the lead role in Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod’s Bel Ami. In the costume drama based on Guy de Maupassant’s 1885 novel of the same name, Pattinson portrayed an ambitious and amoral social striver, a former soldier who seeks to improve his fortunes by seducing the wives (played by Christina Ricci, Uma Thurman and Kristin Scott Thomas) of powerful men.
At the film’s world premiere, sporting a severe buzz cut instead of Cullen’s tousled locks, Pattinson told reporters he hoped his Twilight fans would be open to his new direction. “The biggest disservice you can do to your audience is trying to repeat the same thing and get them to come just to get money or whatever,” he said. But rather than applaud Pattinson for taking a risk, critics turned a collective thumbs down. Wrote THR’s David Rooney: “There’s no inner life in the miscast actor’s one-dimensional characterization. He lacks the fundamental guile for the role.” With a measly 28 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, the Magnolia Pictures release grossed just $120,462 domestically and a slightly better $9.4 million worldwide.
Of course, Pattinson has long since established his critical and box office bona fides in such films as Josh and Benny Safdie’s Good Time, Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse, Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and Matt Reeves’ The Batman. And he’ll be attending this year’s fest with potentially his wildest movie yet, Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17, a sci-fi satire in which Pattinson plays a series of identical clones.