What’s great about “Dangerous Liaisons” is that it knows just how soapy and ridiculous this all is. It’s set in stuffy, aristocratic France, but everything about this story is sex, love and revenge all the time. It’s absurd, but here, it works.
I saw an adaptation of Christopher Hampton’s play of the same name (he’s also the screenwriter) and think it’s a lot better as a film. The play is all talk and gossip. It’s bogged down under names and archaic language. The elaborate web of steamy fucking becomes impossible to follow in that setting. Here however, Frears’s cross cutting does the story wonders. He jumps from bed to bed, drawing room to drawing room and keeps the many liaisons, dangerous or not, in check. Continue reading “Rapid Response: Dangerous Liaisons”