Sex intentions
The history of cinematic adaptions of Dangerous Liaisons is a strange one. The earliest, to my knowledge, is a French film from 1959 that took place in what was then the present day. This was apparently so misleading that it needed to be rechristened Les Liaisons dangereuses 1960. The next two adaptations were a pair of dueling English-language films that were more direct period adaptations of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 novel. Stephen Frears’ Dangerous Liaisons (1988) is probably the gold standard for film versions, especially if you want a filmed version of the novel (though, irony of ironies, it is based on a stage play). Miloš Forman’s Valmont (1989) foundered on—among other things—the casting of an early-career Colin Firth in the title role. Two other films transfer the action to East Asia: Untold Scandal (2003) takes place in eighteenth-century Korea, while the Chinese Dangerous Liaisons moves the action to 1930s Shanghai. Then, of course, Cruel Intentions (1999) puts the action in a modern American high school. Michael Lucas’ gay pornographic version (2005) likewise takes place in the present.
The point of this rehearsal is that modernizing the story of the Ancien Régime novel is actually the preferred method of retelling it. Tipping the scale further in this direction is the brand-new adaptation by Rachel Suissa, which, following the example set by Cruel Intentions (to such an extent that some lost souls believe it is a remake), is set in a modern-day high school, only now that high school is in Biarritz, a coastal city in southwestern France. Fast-forwarding the story 240 years is the only defensible choice the film makes, since this Netflix original, exclusively available on streaming, is a streaming pile of shit.
For those unfamiliar with the source material, Dangerous Liaisons is the story of the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, two aristocratic sociopaths who delight in corrupting the young and the innocent. Merteuil gives Valmont two marks as a challenge: Cécile de Volanges, the naïve fiancée of Merteuil’s former lover, and Madame de Tourvel, a married woman whose commitment to virtue attracts Valmont like a wasp to a ripe peach. If he pulls off these two dick hits, Merteuil will reward him with a night together. Love and jealousy get in the way of their plans, and by the end of the novel, the lucky characters are dead, while the rest spend the rest of their sorry lives in utter disgrace.
Dangerous Liaisons ’22 has kept the title but changed most of the character names… and the plot details… and the major themes of the story. Instead of Madame de Tourvel, we have Célène de Balec (Paola Locatelli), a waif newly arrived from Paris who has come to live with her dimbulb cousin, Charlotte de Riva (Héloïse Janjaud, but also Cécile de Volanges), after the death of her mother has left her father spiraling into a depression. She soon meets golden boy Tristan Badiola (Simon Rérolle), a local surfer bro and white rapper who saves Célène’s dog from oncoming traffic. Their friendship soon draws the ire of Tristan’s ersatz girlfriend, queen bee and Instagram influencer Vanessa Merteuil (Ella Pellegrini).
So, yes, doofus Tristan is our Valmont, and what a sorry Valmont he is. When Merteuil learns that Célène, who is 17, is engaged to be married because she believes in True Love, she gives Tristan the directive to fuck her. Which he does. Eventually. After they are both single. And have fallen in love for real. And Tristan confesses to almost sleeping with Charlotte. It isn’t even a lie, since this version of Cécile fares much better than her counterparts across the multiverse. Even Colin Firth was nastier in this role. The image of the future Mr. Darcy caressing Fairuza Balk’s butt is one that will haunt you till your death. No such butt-cuddling here. These kids even use condoms. So what we have here scarcely amounts to a liaison, much less a dangerous one.
If I can put my finger on one thing wrong with the film—apart from the writing, the directing, and the acting (but not the casting—my, these people are beautiful)—is that it treats Laclos’ powder keg of a novel as a literary artifact that has aged into respectability like politicians, ugly buildings, and whores. It is not really interested in engaging with the nastiness of the story but rather accords it the superficial respect of one literary monument among others. Evidence of this viewpoint is persistent and aggravating references to other canonical French writers, including Balzac (the name of Célène’s dog), Victor Hugo (the name of her high school), and Proust (she brings Swann’s Way to a party). The deepest cut is also the strangest: Célène proposes, for some reason, that her school produce a rap musical version (à la Hamilton) of Madame de La Fayette’s 1662 novel La Princesse de Montpensier, which becomes the literal stage for the film’s climax. In its second half, the movie feels almost as much of an adaptation of that novel (filmed as recently as 2010 by Bernard Tavernier) as it does Dangerous Liaisons. And I can’t help but ask: Why?
The film is scarcely better as a story of modern high schoolers. It at least has a perspective, and that perspective is: Instagram is bad. It will cause you to run over dogs. It will turn you into a Mean Girl. It will broadcast your sexual conquests to your entire high school (via the too convenient Tout le lycée button; they probably should disable that feature). But Insta followers are also the reward for virtuous behavior. One of the first things we learn about Célène is that she has three and a half million followers, while, at the end of the story, Merteuil has a paltry three.
Instagram, at least, is a real thing that’s corrupting the youth, and it could have been a clever substitute for the novel’s epistolary structure. Everything else about this high school—and these high schoolers—is utterly detached from reality. First up is Célène, this dork that brings Proust to a house party. Why in God’s name is she engaged? The novel does not dictate this, and her situation could have been explained (as it is Cruel Intentions) with the four simple words: “I’m waiting for marriage.” Then we have the issue of the soirée cosplay hosted by Merteuil at the film’s midpoint. Célène, because she does not resemble any living, breathing human, dresses as Madame de Sévigné, a notable seventeenth-century letter writer. Her GBF (Jin Xuan Mao, whose performance is probably a hate crime) dresses as Kurt Cobain. Charlotte is a sexy nun. Tristan is a sexy Dracula. Merteuil is the evil queen from Snow White. The whole affair ends in an orgy. I was very disturbed. Do any of these people know what cosplay is?! The writers sure don’t.
I have been focusing on the plot to the detriment of the other aspects of filmmaking. Here is the short version: they suck. The music, especially, is a sonic assault. The needle drops are constant (the only one I recognized was Carly Rae Jepsen’s evergreen “Call Me Maybe”), and they are entirely distinct from Tristan’s incessant white boy rapping. Then there is the issue of the language. I stumbled across a positive review that credited this film for at least featuring the lyricism of the French language. Sweet summer child, this movie is not in French. It is frequently spoken in a form of argot known as verlan, where words are rearranged so that femme becomes meuf and fête becomes teuf. More excruciatingly, it is spoken in franglais. One ghastly example occurs at the soirée cosplay where Merteuil (who, in this version, was once a successful child actress) announces that she has just been cast in a new film. Here is the speech she delivers:
This is officially translated as: “Are you having fun? Want the lowdown on something extra exclusive? I’m making my comeback in Little Sophie 4. So, tonight, let’s party harder than ever!” They don’t even retain all the English in the original!
On top of that are some stupid lines that would sound dumb in any language: “Oscar? Oscar from The Voice?!” “I sucked off a monk.” “Can I call you V like in Gossip Girl?” “When I lost your mother, I also lost my muse.” “25,000 followers in one month? Your mother must be proud!” “Fuck the sea.” “Fuck redemption.” The coup de grace isn’t exactly a line but is plenty stupid. When Célène’s fiancé Pierre and Tristan eventually meet, Pierre knows who he is thanks to a billboard with Tristan’s face about a meter away from where they are standing.
Even with so many other demerits against it, I regret to say that we have not even reached the bottom of the barrel. That would be the ending. The ending of the novel Dangerous Liaisons is not a happy one. One character, in particular, is supposed to be very dead. That person very much isn’t by the end of this sorry spectacle. Instead, we are treated to a montage of people asking each other for forgiveness as true love conquers all. The novel and its various other adaptations are either a critique of libertinism or a celebration of the same, but one thing it isn’t is a story of redemption or the power of love. It also occurred to me that this movie is trying very hard to tick every box on the representation checklist. That’s not a problem in itself—noble in intent, even, if not in execution—but it also means we have a version of a scandal-rag novel about rape and sexual exploitation that is actively trying not to offend anyone. Well, it offended me. Fuck redemption. Fuck this movie.
Gavin McDowell is a Hoosier by birth and French by adoption. He received his doctorate in “Languages, History, and Literature of the Ancient World from the Beginning until Late Antiquity” and is currently investigating Aramaic translations of the Bible. He is supremely unqualified to talk about film. For more of his unprovoked movie opinions, see his Letterboxd account.
The point of this rehearsal is that modernizing the story of the Ancien Régime novel is actually the preferred method of retelling it. Tipping the scale further in this direction is the brand-new adaptation by Rachel Suissa, which, following the example set by Cruel Intentions (to such an extent that some lost souls believe it is a remake), is set in a modern-day high school, only now that high school is in Biarritz, a coastal city in southwestern France. Fast-forwarding the story 240 years is the only defensible choice the film makes, since this Netflix original, exclusively available on streaming, is a streaming pile of shit.
For those unfamiliar with the source material, Dangerous Liaisons is the story of the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, two aristocratic sociopaths who delight in corrupting the young and the innocent. Merteuil gives Valmont two marks as a challenge: Cécile de Volanges, the naïve fiancée of Merteuil’s former lover, and Madame de Tourvel, a married woman whose commitment to virtue attracts Valmont like a wasp to a ripe peach. If he pulls off these two dick hits, Merteuil will reward him with a night together. Love and jealousy get in the way of their plans, and by the end of the novel, the lucky characters are dead, while the rest spend the rest of their sorry lives in utter disgrace.
Dangerous Liaisons ’22 has kept the title but changed most of the character names… and the plot details… and the major themes of the story. Instead of Madame de Tourvel, we have Célène de Balec (Paola Locatelli), a waif newly arrived from Paris who has come to live with her dimbulb cousin, Charlotte de Riva (Héloïse Janjaud, but also Cécile de Volanges), after the death of her mother has left her father spiraling into a depression. She soon meets golden boy Tristan Badiola (Simon Rérolle), a local surfer bro and white rapper who saves Célène’s dog from oncoming traffic. Their friendship soon draws the ire of Tristan’s ersatz girlfriend, queen bee and Instagram influencer Vanessa Merteuil (Ella Pellegrini).
So, yes, doofus Tristan is our Valmont, and what a sorry Valmont he is. When Merteuil learns that Célène, who is 17, is engaged to be married because she believes in True Love, she gives Tristan the directive to fuck her. Which he does. Eventually. After they are both single. And have fallen in love for real. And Tristan confesses to almost sleeping with Charlotte. It isn’t even a lie, since this version of Cécile fares much better than her counterparts across the multiverse. Even Colin Firth was nastier in this role. The image of the future Mr. Darcy caressing Fairuza Balk’s butt is one that will haunt you till your death. No such butt-cuddling here. These kids even use condoms. So what we have here scarcely amounts to a liaison, much less a dangerous one.
If I can put my finger on one thing wrong with the film—apart from the writing, the directing, and the acting (but not the casting—my, these people are beautiful)—is that it treats Laclos’ powder keg of a novel as a literary artifact that has aged into respectability like politicians, ugly buildings, and whores. It is not really interested in engaging with the nastiness of the story but rather accords it the superficial respect of one literary monument among others. Evidence of this viewpoint is persistent and aggravating references to other canonical French writers, including Balzac (the name of Célène’s dog), Victor Hugo (the name of her high school), and Proust (she brings Swann’s Way to a party). The deepest cut is also the strangest: Célène proposes, for some reason, that her school produce a rap musical version (à la Hamilton) of Madame de La Fayette’s 1662 novel La Princesse de Montpensier, which becomes the literal stage for the film’s climax. In its second half, the movie feels almost as much of an adaptation of that novel (filmed as recently as 2010 by Bernard Tavernier) as it does Dangerous Liaisons. And I can’t help but ask: Why?
The film is scarcely better as a story of modern high schoolers. It at least has a perspective, and that perspective is: Instagram is bad. It will cause you to run over dogs. It will turn you into a Mean Girl. It will broadcast your sexual conquests to your entire high school (via the too convenient Tout le lycée button; they probably should disable that feature). But Insta followers are also the reward for virtuous behavior. One of the first things we learn about Célène is that she has three and a half million followers, while, at the end of the story, Merteuil has a paltry three.
Instagram, at least, is a real thing that’s corrupting the youth, and it could have been a clever substitute for the novel’s epistolary structure. Everything else about this high school—and these high schoolers—is utterly detached from reality. First up is Célène, this dork that brings Proust to a house party. Why in God’s name is she engaged? The novel does not dictate this, and her situation could have been explained (as it is Cruel Intentions) with the four simple words: “I’m waiting for marriage.” Then we have the issue of the soirée cosplay hosted by Merteuil at the film’s midpoint. Célène, because she does not resemble any living, breathing human, dresses as Madame de Sévigné, a notable seventeenth-century letter writer. Her GBF (Jin Xuan Mao, whose performance is probably a hate crime) dresses as Kurt Cobain. Charlotte is a sexy nun. Tristan is a sexy Dracula. Merteuil is the evil queen from Snow White. The whole affair ends in an orgy. I was very disturbed. Do any of these people know what cosplay is?! The writers sure don’t.
I have been focusing on the plot to the detriment of the other aspects of filmmaking. Here is the short version: they suck. The music, especially, is a sonic assault. The needle drops are constant (the only one I recognized was Carly Rae Jepsen’s evergreen “Call Me Maybe”), and they are entirely distinct from Tristan’s incessant white boy rapping. Then there is the issue of the language. I stumbled across a positive review that credited this film for at least featuring the lyricism of the French language. Sweet summer child, this movie is not in French. It is frequently spoken in a form of argot known as verlan, where words are rearranged so that femme becomes meuf and fête becomes teuf. More excruciatingly, it is spoken in franglais. One ghastly example occurs at the soirée cosplay where Merteuil (who, in this version, was once a successful child actress) announces that she has just been cast in a new film. Here is the speech she delivers:
Est-ce que vous kiffez? Vous voulez une info archi cool en exclu? Je vais faire mon grand comeback dans La Petite Sophie 4. Alors, ce soir, c’est NO LIMIT!
This is officially translated as: “Are you having fun? Want the lowdown on something extra exclusive? I’m making my comeback in Little Sophie 4. So, tonight, let’s party harder than ever!” They don’t even retain all the English in the original!
On top of that are some stupid lines that would sound dumb in any language: “Oscar? Oscar from The Voice?!” “I sucked off a monk.” “Can I call you V like in Gossip Girl?” “When I lost your mother, I also lost my muse.” “25,000 followers in one month? Your mother must be proud!” “Fuck the sea.” “Fuck redemption.” The coup de grace isn’t exactly a line but is plenty stupid. When Célène’s fiancé Pierre and Tristan eventually meet, Pierre knows who he is thanks to a billboard with Tristan’s face about a meter away from where they are standing.
Even with so many other demerits against it, I regret to say that we have not even reached the bottom of the barrel. That would be the ending. The ending of the novel Dangerous Liaisons is not a happy one. One character, in particular, is supposed to be very dead. That person very much isn’t by the end of this sorry spectacle. Instead, we are treated to a montage of people asking each other for forgiveness as true love conquers all. The novel and its various other adaptations are either a critique of libertinism or a celebration of the same, but one thing it isn’t is a story of redemption or the power of love. It also occurred to me that this movie is trying very hard to tick every box on the representation checklist. That’s not a problem in itself—noble in intent, even, if not in execution—but it also means we have a version of a scandal-rag novel about rape and sexual exploitation that is actively trying not to offend anyone. Well, it offended me. Fuck redemption. Fuck this movie.
Gavin McDowell is a Hoosier by birth and French by adoption. He received his doctorate in “Languages, History, and Literature of the Ancient World from the Beginning until Late Antiquity” and is currently investigating Aramaic translations of the Bible. He is supremely unqualified to talk about film. For more of his unprovoked movie opinions, see his Letterboxd account.
