Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
Directed by Stephen Frears
In 18th century France, Marquise de Merteuil asks her ex-lover Vicomte de Valmont to seduce the future wife of another ex-lover of hers in return for one last night with her. Yet things don’t go as planned.
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What critics compared Dangerous Liaisons to
The screenplay was co-written by Fontaine and playwright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton (“Dangerous Liaisons,” “A Dangerous Method”).
The screenplay is by Christopher Hampton, Oscar-winner in 1989 for his script for "Dangerous Liaisons," adapted from his own play.
And the adapted screenplay comes from a respected writer: Christopher Hampton (who won an Oscar for adapting " Dangerous Liaisons ").
Adapted by the playwright Christopher Hampton (“ Dangerous Liaisons ,” “ Atonement ”), the film adheres to Lessing’s own spare, unyielding prose — a framework Fontaine regrettably festoons with vapid beauty shots and longingly pretty gazes.
Emma is sort of a kindlier version of Glenn Close’s carnivorous marquis from “Dangerous Liaisons,” a self-appointed matchmaker and string-puller.
Glenn Close and John Malkovich made gender politics diabolical sport in "Dangerous Liaisons" as the two appealed to one another's self-loathing.
I knew Dangerous Liaisons (1988), starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich, was really good, but I forgot how good until last night.
"Cruel Intentions" is literally "Dangerous Liaisons" transplanted to present-day Upper East Side Manhattan and featuring ruthless teenagers playing sexual power games instead of 18th Century French aristocrats.
"Cruel Intentions'' is a modern-day version of "Dangerous Liaisons,'' with rich kids in a prep school playing roles that were written for jaded French aristocrats in the wicked 1782 novel by Choderlos De Laclos.
It's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the 1782 French novel of sexual manipulation that led to the 1988 films Dangerous Liaisons and Valmont (as in Sebastian Valmont).
Now comes Cruel Intentions, inspired by Choderlos de Laclos's "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" (better known in this country as "Dangerous Liaisons").
If one is to judge the new film version of Ian McEwan’s award-winning novel — brought to the screen by writer Christopher Hampton (“Dangerous Liaisons”) and director Joe Wright (“Pride and Prejudice”) — for its fidelity to the source material, “Atonement” is certainly a success.
Although a film can never take us as deep into an individual psyche as a novel, the screenplay by Christopher Hampton ("Dangerous Liaisons") makes a noble effort and the seamless work of the actresses stands out.
Treacheries committed in the name of art and expiation sought are McEwan's themes at their grandest, but director Joe Wright (Pride & Prejudice) and screenwriter Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons) are convinced that what a moviegoer wants from a literary adaptation is refinement and good breeding.
While watching Joe Wright's intensely cinematic interpretation of McEwan's book (co-executive-produced by McEwan and written by Christopher Hampton, best known for adapting "Dangerous Liaisons," "The Honorary Consul"/"Beyond the Limit," "The Quiet American," "The Good Father), I kept wondering how far into the story I had actually read.
It's dealing with very tricky subject matter, like trying to grasp smoke, and it slips and slides through Wright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton's ("Dangerous Liaisons") fingers.
Wright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton (“Dangerous Liaisons”) understand implicitly that Ian McEwan’s material is already suffused with all the necessary elements to move the human heart.
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Even if this unique absurdist has not exactly been your cup of tea previously, he might finally win you over with this deliciously “ Dangerous Liaisons ”-esque and thoroughly female-driven period film, co-written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara .
Set in the court of Queen Anne during the early 1700s, with jaunty dollops of classical music playing in ironic counterpart to all the low-minded chicanery, the movie is “Barry Lyndon” meets “Dangerous Liaisons” meets “All About Eve,” with blood flourishes lifted from Peter Greenaway.
Unlike the similarly set Barry Lyndon or Dangerous Liaisons, which both had strong female characters toppled by the whims of strutting cocks, Lanthimos’s latest makes the men extraneous, building a potent hothouse atmosphere that swirls with secret desires.
Cleverly written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, The Favourite is a kind of sapphic Dangerous Liaisons, without all the melodrama.
Set in an unnaturally quiet London, "Closer" often seems like a contemporary variation on "Dangerous Liaisons," although no one here experiences even a taste of the joyful malevolence or the smug self-satisfaction that Valmont and Merteuil gleaned from their string of conquests and seductions in 1780s France.
Their ruthlessness and self-destructive game-playing is from the Dangerous Liaisons and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Determined to help Sandrine divorce herself from the sticky moral and societal complications of female promiscuity, Nathalie becomes the instrument for both of them to infiltrate a male-dominated financial corporation, targeting the most professionally-advantageous sexual conquests and enlisting the pair on a quest that resembles first the erotic gamesmanship of Dangerous Liaisons, then the carnal impact of Fight Club , and finally the literal stratified ascent of Matthew Barney's Entered Apprentice (Cremaster 3).
This may sound like a tongue-in-cheek variant on Dangerous Liaisons, and I suppose on one level it is.
A scene with the refrain of “Do you want me to stop?” is straight out of Dangerous Liaisons, replacing “It’s beyond my control.”
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The result feels like a ridiculously opulent cross between Dangerous Liaisons and All About Eve.
Instead, this nasty, perverted, and highly enjoyable erotic thriller is the most ferocious movie about matters of the heart since Dangerous Liaisons .