In 1782, a French author wrote a book called Les liaisons dangereuses about romance games in Louis XVI-era France. The novel was turned into a play in the mid-1980s, which would explain why the source would eventually get turned into two movies in the late 1980s. I blogged about Valmont back in 2018; that is apparently based more on the book. More based on the play is a movie that came out one year earlier, titled Dangerous Liaisons. Not actually having seen Dangerous Liaisons, I recorded it when it showed up on TCM. It's got multiple airings coming up over the next week, starting with tomorrow 2:11 PM on Starz Cinema, so I recently sat down to watch it and do a review on it.
Having seen Valmont, I more or less knew the story. The Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close) and Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich) are a pair of manipulative people in 1780s France. The marquise has an ex-lover she wants to get revenge against. He's going to be married to the virginal Cécile de Volanges (Uma Thurman), so the marquise would like Valmont to deflower Cécile before the marriage so that when the ex-lover goes to consummate the marriage, he'll find Cécile is no longer a virgin.
Valmont doesn't plan to do this at first, as he's more interested in going after Mme. de Tourvel (Michelle Pfeiffer), who is a friend of Valmont's aunt (Mildred Natwick in one of her final screen roles). She's married but utterly loyal to her husband, so bedding her is going to be quite difficult. But then Valmont has a change of plans as he learns that Cécile's mother (Swoosie Kurtz) has Valmont down to a T. That makes Valmont want to deflower Cécile not to help Merteuil, but to get back at the elder Volanges.
It turns out that Valmont isn't the only person pursuing Cécile. While all of these machinations among the adults have been going on, Cécile has met another obliging man close to her age, young Danceny (Keanu Reeves). Among other things, he teaches music, and starts tutoring Cécile in order that he can be closer to her, even though he can never have her in a licit relationship since he's not of noble background.
Things get a lot more complicated by two things in Valmont's life. One is that he's finally able to seduce Tourvel, although he falls in love with her, which he hadn't intended. The other is that he more or less rapes Cécile, knocking her up in the process. Now it will really be obvious that she isn't a virgin. All of this leads the film to its denouement....
Both Dangerous Liaisons and Valmont are well-made movies, and which one you like more will probably depend on which one you see first. That's part of the reason I somewhat prefer Valmont. However, there are other reasons not so related to having seen Valmont first. One is the casting of John Malkovich as Valmont. I didn't care for it, and thought that Colin Firth as Valmont in the later movie works well as he's better as portraying the sort of dashing Casanova attitude that I think is needed for the role. Malkovich is too cold and calculating. Keanu Reeves is also not really well-suited to period pieces like this, although at least his is decidedly a supporting character.
But none of that is to say that Dangerous Liaisons is a bad movie by any means. If you like period pieces, I definitely think you'll enjoy Dangerous Liaisons.
No comments:
Post a Comment