Movies |
Dangerous Liaisons
directed by Stephen Frears
By
Published: Jan 01, 2007
Category:
Drama
We go to movies for many reasons. We like spectacle, so we pile into the multiplex on opening weekend to catch the latest blockbuster. We crave violence, so we slink into a theater for some nasty thrills. And then we like to see life as others live it, so we go to…. well, these days we make a pilgrimage to the art house to see a film with subtitles.
American studios resist personal dramas for all sorts of reasons, but the biggest is economics. Personal dramas are exactly that — the vision of a single filmmaker (always risky), populated by characters that movie stars don’t always want to play (what? the hero doesn’t get the girl?) and drenched in dialogue (which is such a bore when it’s time to slap subtitles on it for foreign audiences).
Independent films take up the slack. But unless you live in a city or a college town, you have no choice but to worship at the god of Netflix. A great service, but you’re denied one of cinema’s greatest attractions — the communal pleasure of watching a movie with others. I’ll never forget the moment, near the end of “Y tu mama tambien,” when a drunk and happy Maribel Verdu drops a coin in a jukebox and dances her way back to her young lovers — just about everyone in the audience gasped at her joyous sensuality. I saw the movie at home recently. Not the same, not nearly.
“Dangerous Liaisons,” released in 1988, is a thrilling movie in part because of its rarity. Okay, an English director — most recently, Frears made a film you might have seen: “The Queen” — but jam-packed with American actors. Glenn Close, then at the height of her career, plays the Marquise De Merteuil, the stone-hearted beauty who toys with men, and John Malkovich, back when he still enjoyed being a star, is the Vicomte De Valmont, her match in romantic crime. Add Uma Thurman and Michelle Pfeiffer as their victims and Keanu Reaves as eye candy, costume them opulently, and underpin the film with a score that offers the 18th century’s greatest hits, and you’ve got a package even an American studio could get behind.
Oh, I forget: the dialogue. Adapted from that old chestnut of an epistolary novel — Les Liaisons Dangereuses, by Choderlos de Laclos — the plot is essentially a duel. But instead of swords, the weapons are words. And instead of death, the prize is sex.
That is, Close will sleep with Malkovich if he can seduce Pfeiffer, a wife of unimpeachable virtue. Malkovich finds this challenge worthy: “I want her to believe in God and the sanctity of marriage — and still not be able to stop herself.”
Malkovich is reprehensible, a rich, spoiled nobleman who makes you think the guillotine wasn’t such a bad idea. And yet we watch his seductions — and not just of Pfeiffer — as if we were watching a bad-boy tennis pro at the U.S. Open. Why is that?
After all, we are Good People (loyal, faithful, trustworthy, not likely to proposition our next-door neighbor). But that’s reducing us to characters simple enough for Hollywood entertainment. We are, I suspect, many people — and some of them are bad, bad, bad.
So we are also carrying Good’s dark twin. We want to sleep with anyone we damn well please. Some of our fantasies are rough and ready: in a rainy alley, at night, with a stranger. And some are the height of elegance: a verbal seduction that approaches art, words so sweet they might as well take the place of sex.
“Dangerous Liaisons” is of the slick-talking school. And that, says a friend who lives in Paris, is why women find it as titillating as men do. “I’ve always thought ,” she writes, “that women, no matter how intelligent, with no matter how much self esteem, always go weak in the knees for audacity.” Which Malkovich is, in spades. You can’t take your eyes off him. More to the point: You can’t not listen.
You may hate yourself in the morning, but you’ll love “Dangerous Liaisons” tonight.
To buy the DVD of “Dangerous Liaisons” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy the novel of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” from Amazon.com, click here.
