”Dear friend” and a viewer who believes in love
Robert Pattinson for many spectators overshadows any surrounding reality so much that writing about a film with the main character of a vulgar vampire saga ( "Twilight" , oh, yes) is difficult: every now and then are heard sobs in the corners.However, the adaptation of the famous and moderately scandalous novel Guy de Maupassant (he is touchingly listed as a co-author of the script) Dear Friend deserves a separate discussion, and the point here is not at all cute the main character and not even in "love", which today is customary to trade right and left. The director Declan Donnellan meticulously reproduced the original source (throwing out political intrigues and bits of journalism, but not the fact that the author himself did it so well), but we will still refer the reader to the novel itself: firstly, it is useful to read, it develops intelligence and ingenuity, and secondly, Maupassant - with all the others - one of the best authors of the XIX century, completing the"golden age"of the French novel (and these are Dumas the father, Flaubert, Zola, the Goncourt brothers, Balzac and Stendhal ). There are no complaints about the director: the stupid and flat Georges Duroy (this is our Pattinson ) against the backdrop of a brilliant and languid Paris, bathed in money, in turn seduces the smart, thin and beautiful ladies of high society Clotilde de Marel ( Christina Ricci ), Virginia Walter ( Christine Scott Thomas ) and Madeleine Forestier ( Uma Thurman - and, without a doubt, the best role in the picture), and the young romantic fool Suzanne Walter (played by Holly Granger ).  Duroy , following the wise advice of Madame Forestier , achieves everything that a provincial can achieve, manipulating not men, but women, who in turn rule all these funny fathers of families. And, perhaps, the main addressee of criticism is still the hero of Pattinson , who is cunning, cautious, cynical, deceitful and pathetic at the same time. For Duroy , the actor himself got it: he, as it turns out from the numerous remarks of irritated spectators, wanders from corner to corner throughout the film, looks into the distance and says vulgarities. How, they say, such a lack of existence could put all these beauties to bed? Flat, they say, Pattinson , for this soulful role of a secular schemer. It is interesting here, of course, not that in the novel Maupassant that Duroy is many times more pitiful and wretched than in the film, but the confidence with which the mass female consciousness resists the obvious .  The sad truth, about which Donnellan talks, is precisely that if anyone can seduce women with packs, it is precisely and only Duroy . It has everything that young ladies of all ages still like so much. He represents, in an exaggerated form, the collective"real man", as he is described in millions of ladies' texts: go to any women's community, you will see. He is not so smart as to be boring (oh, how we do not like about mathematics), he is courteous, he is beautifully dressed and gallant, he can talk and wants to listen, he is a wonderful lover, he does not run to get married, he is ready to devote time to his passion, but at the same time he is moderately cruel and cynical, cold and detached, not easy, oh, how difficult it is. And, of course, handsome, but that's not the main thing. Durua is not boring, and he will always respond to the most idiotic request like"tell me something". He will tell.  Actually, he buys all his women with Duroy with such a threepenny, flat and stupid romance that it is just right to close your eyes and not see it, but you need to look. What for? To understand how a woman's“heart”works in general in a society built around the very idea of “seduction”."You conquer me first", - they say Durua , and he, don't be a fool, takes and conquers, then scattering the conquered as old unnecessary things. But if a woman puts herself in the position of a thing that may sooner or later go into the category of"old", then does it make sense to take offense at the insidious seducer? For every girl who so wants to be cunningly seduced, should she blame her fate and think that perhaps the fate of Marie Curie is much more interesting: her husband did not leave, and we all guess why. You can only throw a thing, and not a thing cannot be thrown.  Technically licked to the point of impossibility "Dear friend" does not tell us about only one thing: how people live who cannot be abandoned. In the world of cheap Parisian temptation, where beauty and money rule, there is absolutely no place for anything alive and real. And if Duroy plays his game like clockwork, it only means that this game is such that any provincial fool can play it. Ifclotildesandsuzanneare ready to break with the past, future and present for him, then such are they, theseclotildesandsuzanne. If this is called"love", and if this"love"is like that, do not believe in it: lies on both sides, and the ladies are unlikely to look better here than the main seducer ... This was understood by Maupassant , who defended prostitutes (they are more honest than"honest women", first of all, before themselves) and received for it in full, but will the viewer understand this? By the way, it’s interesting how many comments will be devoted (with a cautious glance at the past or with an equally cautious hope toward the future) that"I am not like that, I am waiting for a tram". Let's count, count. 
The Topic of Article: ”Dear friend” and a viewer who believes in love. |
