Les Liaisons Dangereuses
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Actor: Annette Vadim, Gérard Philipe, Jeanne Moreau, Jeanne Valérie, Madeleine LambertDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0
Format: Black & White, DVD, Letterboxed, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 106 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-02-04
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Fox Lorber
DVD Reviews of Les Liaisons Dangereuses
DVD Review: Excellent Film
Summary: 4 Stars
Roger Vadim is hardly a distinguished name in the history of film, but he was always better than most of his detractors thought, and when he ran into good material and a strong cast, good things happened.
That's certainly the case here, a smart, fast tightly-wound adaptation of Chaderos de Lalcos' 18th-century novel of lust and cruelty (and an attempt by de Lalcos, a rather reactionary Catholic, to indict the decay he thought that free-thinking and a lessening of religious faith had brought to French society). No version of this material can completely overcome the original material's sexism and misogyny (only modest, submissive women could be "good" in de Lalcos' eyes), but with intelligence and sensitivity, the characters can be complicated and deepened. And I suspect that even free-thinking atheists enjoy the spectacle of Valmont and Merteuil getting theirs . . .
One of the nice twists of this version (written by Vadim, Roger Vailland, and Claude Brule), is that de Lalcos' villainous pair are now married, although the rest of the plot is pretty much as before; Merteuil (Jeanne Moreau) angry at being dumped by a lover before she could get around to dumping him, asks her husband to seduce and ruin the innocent girl (Jeanne Valery) that she has been dumped for. While off on this, er, mission, Valmont (Gerard Philippe) meets a kind and virtuous married woman (Annette Vadim) and vows to have her. Eventually, both the virgin and the married woman are seduced, but complications spring up; for one thing, the younger woman is truly in love with a young man her own age (Jean-Louis Triginant) and Valmont genuinely falls in love with the married woman, and vice versa. Merteuil, who is in love with her husband, but loathe to admit it (and therefore to emotional vulnerability), sets out to get revenge and sets a series of events in motion that end in Valmont's death and her own physical and emotional desolation.
The success of any version of this material rises and falls on the strength of the leads, and in Moreau and Philippe, Vadim struck gold. Moreau has every ounce of the dignity and style that Glenn Close brought to the 1989 version of this story, but far more sensuality and (though the character would be loathe to admit it) vulnerability--she makes you understand towards the end that Merteuil is, in her own warped way, expressing her love for, and need of, her husband. She doesn't want to lose him. And Philippe, in the last film before his early death, has a wonderful soft-spoken charm, and an ability to show the callous self-absorption beneath it. And when his character really falls in love, as he does with the virtuous Madame Tourvel, he makes the character's awakening to real emotion deeply touching. As Madame Tourvel, Annette Vadim is genuinely touching, and unlike Michelle Pfeffier some 30 years later, she had the kind of dignity and bearing that the character needs (even her brief nude scene, towards the end of the film, feels much less exploitative and sleazy than other such scenes in Vadim films do; he didn't make her over into a baby doll, either in this film or the subsequent BLOOD AND ROSES). Jeanne Valery and Jean-Louis Trinigant, as the young innocent targeted for ruin and the young man she loves, are funny and appealing and touching as inexperienced youngsters who are put through the fire of ugly experience but emerge with their basic decency intact.
And one cannot talk about this film without mentioning Thelonious Monk's graceful, witty, and ultimately mournful score. It hovers over the action like the secret voice of a mournful deity, watching the mess that his creations have made of their lives with both a detached amusment and a deep, sympathetic sorrow.
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Description of Les Liaisons Dangereuses
The imperious Jeanne Moreau stars in this modernized adaptation of the classic French novel of seduction and deceit, Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Moreau and Gérard Philipe play the amoral Juliette and Valmont, a wife and husband in 1960s Paris who tell each other everything about their endless affairs; they respect nothing but each other's manipulative skill. But when Valmont genuinely falls in love with a virtuous woman (Annette Vadim, the director's wife at the time), Juliette tastes the bitterness of jealousy for the first time. Her revenge destroys not only their lives, but the lives of several innocents as well. Director Roger Vadim is unsubtle, but not without style. Like his other films (And God Created Woman, Barbarella), Liaisons features discreet nudity and aloof displays of passion, but the brilliantly orchestrated plot gives Liaisons real momentum, helped by a fantastic score from jazz giant Thelonious Monk. --Bret FetzerBestsellers in DVD
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