Much as I dislike sketchy overviews from an Olympian altitude, the spate of movies opening in a short space, like the even shorter space at my disposal, compels me to this foreshortening.
Valmont, Milos Forman and Jean Claude Carrière’s abominable “free” adaptation of Les Liaisons dangereuses, manages to go even Stephen Frears and Christopher Hampton’s incompetent Dangerous Liaisons much more than one worse. Choderlos de Laclos’s black masterpiece has been turned into a slaphappy diversion for stoned teenyboppers and tired businessmen lusting for as much soft-core titillation as the presence of their wives will allow. So, for instance, we get Annette Bening taking a bath, inexplicably, in her shift while talking to Colin Firth. Convent girls in France did this till over a century later, but the Marquise de Merteuil (even as played by the sweetly American Miss Bening)? And would the Vicomte de Valmont, that devilishly impeccable aristocrat (even as played by the unvirilely British Firth), express his displeasure by petulantly overturning her tub?
Comments