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France before 1789: When a widow hears that her lover is to marry her cousin's daughter, she asks the playboy Valmont to take the girl's virginity. But first she bets him, with her body as prize, to seduce a virtuous, young, married woman.
after two film adaptations of choderlos de laclos' epistolary masterpiece les liaisons dangereuses (following roger vadim's 1957 modern-dress version, and stephen frears' 1988 treatment of christopher hampton's stage adaptation), here comes valmont, which director milos forman (amadeus) and screenwriter jean-claude carriere (the unbearable lightness of being) she "freely adadpted" from the book.
the film is rapturously beautiful, enticing us into a lush, aristocratic world. the widowed marquise de merteuil (annette bening) sees valmont, a former lover, as a valued friend but a fatal attraction. as a woman in a prefeminist society, she wages a devious war against male domination. when her lover ( jeffrey fones) scorns her in favor of the virginal cecile (fairuza balk), merteuil entices valmont to deflower the bride-to-be. when merteuil feels shamed by the virtue of madame de tourvel (a bland mag tilly), she enlists valmont to turn this pious judge's wife into an adulteress.
the film look stunningly beautiful throughout and the performances are excellent. the cast is all very young and the 15-year-old virgin who is being married really does come across as a sweet innocent. the manipulation is still there while the audience gets the overview of the game and can see how things start to go wrong.
forman's vision is finally, more humane, more devastating.
Colin Firth