Valmont

World-building and otherworldly cast propel alternate take on Dangerous Liaisons

Annette Bening and Fairuza Balk in “Valmont”

VALMONT (1989) is directed and cast at such a superb level that it's not only fine for its story to amount to such a trifle, but we’re grateful that much of its melodrama was moved out of the way. This allows the art design more stage and its actors space to move naturally. An English/ French co-production, the picture has the best qualities of a big-budget spectacle and an independent film, and rather than suffer in comparison to the adaptation that beat it into theaters by a year–Dangerous Liaisons (1988)--offers greater ambiguity, as well as performances that are thrilling.

Choderlos de Laclos entered the French Royal Army in 1759 at age eighteen and spent twenty years in the service. He wrote light verse and in 1777, a comic opera he’d written titled Ernestine was staged. Laclos’ ambition was to write a novel that would live on after his death. While posted to the Île-d'Aix at the mouth of the river Charente in 1779, Laclos wrote Les liaisons dangereuses. The novel concerns two scheming aristocrats–Madame de Merteuil and Vicomte de Valmont–who, for lack of any socially redeeming values, seduce, deceive and destroy the lives of others at their pleasure. Their victims include Cécile Volange, the pure teenage daughter of Merteuil’s cousin whose mentorship she’s been given responsibility for, and Madame de Tourvel, the virtuous but naïve wife of a member of French Parliament who Valmont has fixated on corrupting. The novel unfolds in epistolary fashion, as letters between these players. Published in 1782, Les liaisons dangereuses created a sensation, with readers speculating which members of high society were being depicted. Laclos’ book was banned in several countries, including Austria, for indecency, ensuring it remained very popular.

Meg Tilly and Colin Firth in “Valmont”

Miloš Forman discovered Les liaisons dangereuses as a college student in the mid-1950s, enrolled at the Film and Television Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague. Forman’s literature professor, Czech author Milan Kundera, who would write The Unbearable Lightness of Being in the 1980s, was a Francophile, and Choderlos de Laclos was among the writers he championed. After settling in America and winning Academy Awards for directing One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Amadeus (1984), Forman was in London in late 1986 to attend a performance of Les liaisons dangereuses, a stage version of the novel adapted by Christopher Hampton and produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Forman noted what he thought were liberties Hampton had taken with the novel, but rereading it, he was surprised to find that the play followed the book, that it was his memory of Les liaisons dangereuses that the play departed from. To collaborate with him on getting that version of the book into a script, Forman commissioned screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, who’d scripted Forman’s first American picture–Taking Off (1971)--and received Academy Award nominations adapting The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) and That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) for Luis Buñuel, and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) with director Philip Kaufman.

In the six months they were writing, Forman’s direction to Carrière was that rather than follow the book with its multiple narrators, they use the letters to construct what might be really going on between the characters in the world outside their letters. With nary a scene from the book ending up in their script, they felt they’d captured the spirit of the book. (The WGA would award screenplay credit to Jean-Claude Carrière & Miloš Forman, based on the novel by Choderlos de Laclos, which had passed into public domain). Forman’s prestige and desire to make his next film in Europe attracted producers Paul Rassam and Michael Hausmann. Paris-based Renn Productions, the French film financier founded by producer Claude Berri, which had partnered with London-based Timothy Burrill Productions to bankroll the Roman Polanski-directed Tess (1979), both came aboard to raise a production budget of roughly $35 million. Forman would be afforded a 121-day shooting schedule, generous for a movie, but comparable to the six months he’d been given to film his previous pictures, the epics Ragtime (1981) and Amadeus.

Henry Thomas and Jeffrey Jones in “Valmont”

Meanwhile, the Royal Shakespeare Company sold the film rights to their play, a popular Broadway staging featuring Lindsay Duncan as Merteuil and Alan Rickman as Valmont–to Lorimar-Telepictures, soon to be absorbed by Warner Bros. Producers Norma Heyman and Hank Moonjean reached out to Forman to propose he direct rather than compete against their picture, adapted by Christopher Hampton. Preferring to make the version of Les liaisons dangereuses he wanted to see, which he’d titled Valmont, Forman declined. Warner Bros. raced ahead with their production, titled Dangerous Liaisons and directed by Stephen Frears, with Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Uma Thurman and Michelle Pfeiffer in the cast. Lorimar’s goal was to start production in May 1988 for a release far ahead of Forman’s version in December 1988. Starting at least three months later than the rival production and needing twice as much time to produce Valmont, Forman anticipated his producers pulling their financing, but instead, they gave him the go-ahead.

Unknown American actor Annette Bening was cast as Merteuil, British actor Colin Firth as Valmont, Meg Tilly as Madame de Tourvel and Fairuza Balk as Cécile Volange. Though Michelle Pfeiffer had been offered the role of Merteuil in Valmont, she chose the smaller role of Tourvel in Dangerous Liaisons. Forman had originally cast Tilly as Constanze Mozart in Amadeus, replacing her after Tilly tore ligaments in her leg playing soccer with the crew. Balk, then 14 ½ years old, had played Dorothy in the ill-fated Walt Disney mega-production Return To Oz (1985). The most recognizable name in the cast was Henry Thomas, unrecognizable from the child actor in E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982). With no distributor lined up, Valmont commenced shooting in August 1988 in Paris. The opening scene at the convent was filmed at the Abbaye-aux-Hommes (Men's Abbey) in the city of Caen. The opera house featured in two pivotal scenes is the Théâtre National de l'Opéra (Paris Opera). Madame de Rosemonde’s estate was filmed at the Château de La Motte-Tilly, an 18th century manor located in Aube.

Meg Tilly in “Valmont”

With Orion Pictures as U.S. distributor, Valmont opened November 1989. It was competing for ticket buyers against the Walt Disney Company’s big return to animated musicals with The Little Mermaid, one of the year’s surefire blockbusters in Back to the Future Part II and fatally, Steel Magnolias, which appealed to adults looking for star-studded entertainment. While Amadeus hadn’t needed stars to vie for prestige, winning multiple Academy Awards including Best Picture, audiences hadn’t seen anything like it before, a lavish peek at the life and times of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Valmont was the second film based on Les liaisons dangereuses to open in a year and seemed familiar. Orion made an appeal to cinema lovers, opening the picture in seven theaters–in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Toronto– on 70mm prints, but audience interest was nil. Critics were mixed in their reviews. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave Valmont two thumbs up–admirers of Dangerous Liaisons who found this variation equally compelling–but writing for the New York Times, Janet Maslin faulted the film for expanding lesser moments while downplaying necessary ones. It disappeared from theaters quickly.

Annette Bening in “Valmont”

Valmont runs 137 minutes, and its first third is so magnificent it warrants an intermission at 33%, a break to allow viewers to savor its wonders before the film ends, or more likely, fails to finish strongly. The latter is the truer statement, but its treasures are abundant. Miloš Forman, who’d regain the attention of critics and audiences with The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996) and Man In the Moon (1999), demonstrates what makes him an underrated filmmaker: crafting epics with an intimate touch. Miroslav Ondříček, the Czech cinematographer collaborating with Forman for a fifth go, had illuminated 18th century Vienna so well in Amadeus that using natural light or candlepower to dramatize Parisian town and country in the same era feels effortless here. The costumes and makeup aren’t needed to be theatrical like those in Amadeus, and following suit, the camerawork and editing are discreet, as confidential as the characters' letters to each other. The quiet detail in the picture suits the material well, which rather than turn on the machinations of its pickup artists, is more of a lark, like bored teenagers hopping between diversions with less ill intent and more carelessness.

Colin Firth in “Valmont”

Forman has often cast his films with little input from Central Casting and there’s no better example of that than comparing Valmont to Dangerous Liaisons. Annette Bening, essentially playing the lead after appearing in one movie, is a discovery, her precise enunciation contrasting with an unbridled spirit well suited to otherworldly characters (Bening would take the part of Madame de Merteuil after Michelle Pfeiffer passed, and Pfeiffer would take over the role of Selina Kyle/ Catwoman in Batman Returns when Bening had to drop out due to pregnancy). Every moment Bening is on screen is a special effect. Forman missed going 2-0 in the casting crystal ball by not offering Alan Rickman the role of Valmont, and while Rickman would’ve played the seduction of Cécile with relish, Colin Firth was the better choice for a charmer of adult women. Meg Tilly and Fairuza Balk are as gifted playing inter-dimensional travelers as Bening and hold the screen whenever on it. What keeps Valmont from greatness are its stakes. Other than Cécile maneuvering to keep her love of Danceny from her controlling mother (Siân Phillips), characters come and go freely without much regard for being caught in the wrong place, or overheard saying the wrong thing, infidelity, shame and statutory rape having looser definitions in France at that time. We’re less shook by the intentions of the characters as we are amused by their frivolous behavior, but the quality of the production and the finesse of its actors more than compensate.

Video rental category: Drama

Special interest: Femme Fatale