Short Take: Dangerous Liaisons

Over the last few decades, no literary work has attracted more interest from filmmakers than Choderlos de Laclos' 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses. Between 1988 and 2018, at least ten adaptations have been produced for film and television worldwide. It's hard to imagine any being better than 1988's Dangerous Liaisons, cracklingly directed by Stephen Frears from a first-rate script by Christopher Hampton. The story, set in pre-Revolution France, centers on two aristocrats: the Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close) and the Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich). Once lovers, the two are now confidants and occasional partners in romantic gamesmanship. The film begins with the Marquise plotting revenge against a man who has recently broken up with her. She wants Valmont to seduce the virginity-fixated fellow's teenage bride-to-be (Uma Thurman). The Marquise is amused by Valmont's interest in the Madame de Tourvel (Michelle Pfeiffer), the religiously devout wife of a government official, and she agrees to a reward: a night of her favors if he manages both conquests. This sets the stage for the first part of the story, which Frears and Hampton make perhaps the most audaciously hilarious bedroom farce in the history of film. Even more impressive is their powerful handling of the second part. Death and disgrace take over, farce becomes tragedy, and love laughs last. The two aristocrats, smug in their belief they are above love's sentiments, prove themselves love's greatest fools. Frears and Hampton's achievement with the adaptation is two-fold. The first is their realization of the comic possibilities in Laclos' material. (The novel, which tells the story in a series of letters, is an eyebrow-raiser, but it isn't particularly funny.) The second is the deft rendering of the more sympathetic dimensions of the characters, which makes the transition from farce to tragedy possible. Frears and Hampton are helped in this by a knockout cast. In the first part, Glenn Close and John Malkovich play their roles with an arch, flamboyant theatricality: she's all duplicitous smiles and fake sympathy, and he's the quick-witted snake in the ancien régime garden. They completely convey how much the characters enjoy their deviousness. But Close and Malkovich shift very effectively to naturalism when honest emotion breaks through their characters' façades: the Marquise's face melting into lonely desolation when she hears another describe being in love, or Valmont's empathetic retreat from his seduction of Tourvel when he sees the pain in her conflict between desire and faith. There's not a hint of discord between the first part and the second, when the aristocrats' façades and honest feelings are at war. But the performer who does the most to bring the two parts of the story together is Michelle Pfeiffer. She's both vivid and unaffected as Tourvel, and she leaves no doubt the woman is completely without guile. There's no façade in play with Tourvel's initial recoil from Valmont's advances, or her smoldering expression when the two are in bed, or the sweet happiness in her impatience when a servant leads her to meet him. When she goes from being mark to victim, there's no question how completely she's destroyed, or how hideous the aristocrats' games are. Tourvel abandoned her faith for love, and she's left with neither. Pfeiffer and her no-frills directness make a viewer feel it all. The cast also includes Swoosie Kurtz, Keanu Reeves, and Mildred Natwick. The fine cinematography, equally at home in bright sunshine and candlelit rooms, is by Philippe Rousselot. James Acheson provided the gorgeous period costumes. The film was shot at various châteaux outside Paris.