"Dangerous Liaisons" is based upon "Les Liaisons dangereuses" by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, a novel which also served as the basis of the more recent high school black comedy "Cruel Intentions". It is a tale of sexual intrigue and jealousy set among the aristocracy of late eighteenth century France, in the years leading up to the Revolution. The protagonists are the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont, and the plot revolves around their attempts to corrupt the morals of two young women, Cécile de Volanges and Madame de Tourvel. The Marquise's motive is to gain revenge on Cécile's fiancé, a former lover who has jilted her. Valmont, a notorious womaniser, is attracted to Madame de Tourvel not so much for her beauty, although she is exquisitely lovely (she is, after all, played by Michelle Pfeiffer), but rather because she has a reputation for piety and virtue and therefore represents a challenge to him. Valmont easily seduces Cécile, even though she is in love with her music teacher, the Chevalier Danceny, and eventually, through persistence and deceit, wins the affections of Madame de Tourvel. The film then details all the complications arising from this intrigue.
The film can be seen as one of Hollywood's periodic attempts to copy the "heritage cinema" style of historical drama which was very much in vogue in the European, particularly the British and the French, cinema during the eighties and nineties. (Martin Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence", which also starred Michelle Pfeiffer, is another example). It was shot entirely on location in genuine historical buildings in France, and great care was obviously taken with the elaborate costumes and with creating an authentic period atmosphere. There is also some fine acting. Keanu Reeves is rather wooden as Danceny and Uma Thurman's Cécile comes across as a simpering ninny, but all the other main characters are very good.
The critic Hal Hinson rightly described Michelle Pfeiffer's role as Mme de Tourvel as "the least obvious and the most difficult", because virtue is more difficult to portray than wickedness. Pfeiffer was one of the loveliest Hollywood stars of the eighties, but here in addition to her physical beauty she also radiates an inner beauty as well. John Malkovich's Valmont, by contrast, is a reptilian villain who drips with malice. Merteuil is icily calm on the surface, but Glenn Close makes it clear that beneath that surface her character is a woman prey not only to illicit sexual passions but also to irrational hatreds and jealousies.
Despite its period detail and the quality of some of the acting, however, "Dangerous Liaisons" has never been my favourite film. It has always seemed to me to be claustrophobic and airless, set in its own highly artificial world. The sense of claustrophobia was presumably deliberate- most of the scenes are set indoors in the very ornate interiors of the period, and there are a number of shots focusing on closed, or closing, doors. The sense of unreality may derive from the fact that Laclos' source novel is an epistolary novel. This can be a difficult literary genre to adapt for the screen, as the characters' motivations are depicted not directly through words and actions but indirectly through the medium of letters, which cannot always easily be translated into dialogue without losing a lot of the author's meaning. However talented the actors may be, the characters in this film never come alive as rounded human beings, and the atmosphere of world-weariness and heartless cruelty never seems real, except perhaps to those who take at face value all those History Made Simple textbooks that tell us that the eighteenth century French aristocracy were a bunch of creepily decadent sadists who thoroughly deserved their fate at the hands of Madame Guillotine. 6/10
The film can be seen as one of Hollywood's periodic attempts to copy the "heritage cinema" style of historical drama which was very much in vogue in the European, particularly the British and the French, cinema during the eighties and nineties. (Martin Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence", which also starred Michelle Pfeiffer, is another example). It was shot entirely on location in genuine historical buildings in France, and great care was obviously taken with the elaborate costumes and with creating an authentic period atmosphere. There is also some fine acting. Keanu Reeves is rather wooden as Danceny and Uma Thurman's Cécile comes across as a simpering ninny, but all the other main characters are very good.
The critic Hal Hinson rightly described Michelle Pfeiffer's role as Mme de Tourvel as "the least obvious and the most difficult", because virtue is more difficult to portray than wickedness. Pfeiffer was one of the loveliest Hollywood stars of the eighties, but here in addition to her physical beauty she also radiates an inner beauty as well. John Malkovich's Valmont, by contrast, is a reptilian villain who drips with malice. Merteuil is icily calm on the surface, but Glenn Close makes it clear that beneath that surface her character is a woman prey not only to illicit sexual passions but also to irrational hatreds and jealousies.
Despite its period detail and the quality of some of the acting, however, "Dangerous Liaisons" has never been my favourite film. It has always seemed to me to be claustrophobic and airless, set in its own highly artificial world. The sense of claustrophobia was presumably deliberate- most of the scenes are set indoors in the very ornate interiors of the period, and there are a number of shots focusing on closed, or closing, doors. The sense of unreality may derive from the fact that Laclos' source novel is an epistolary novel. This can be a difficult literary genre to adapt for the screen, as the characters' motivations are depicted not directly through words and actions but indirectly through the medium of letters, which cannot always easily be translated into dialogue without losing a lot of the author's meaning. However talented the actors may be, the characters in this film never come alive as rounded human beings, and the atmosphere of world-weariness and heartless cruelty never seems real, except perhaps to those who take at face value all those History Made Simple textbooks that tell us that the eighteenth century French aristocracy were a bunch of creepily decadent sadists who thoroughly deserved their fate at the hands of Madame Guillotine. 6/10