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Critics Consensus: Valmont undermines the essential qualities of its main character's literary counterpart, but solid casting and Milo Forman's deft direction help mitigate those flaws.
Critic Consensus: Valmont undermines the essential qualities of its main character's literary counterpart, but solid casting and Milo Forman's deft direction help mitigate those flaws.
All Critics (29) | Top Critics (11) | Fresh (16) | Rotten (13) | DVD (1)
Colin Firth's Valmont is pleasant, a dreadful thing to say about one of literature's most magnetic seducers.
Valmont is a superb piece of craftsmanship, impeccable in every detail from lighting to costuming, but as a work of art it remains tentative and blurred.
Milos Forman and Jean-Claude Carriere, while fiddling with the plot of this deliciously nasty tale, have studiously embalmed its spirit.
The results are too pretty and well acted to be a total washout, but the fascination with evil and power that gives the novel intensity is virtually absent; what remains is mainly petty malice and mild cynicism.
Because there are no characters animating his panorama, all this serves to prove is that though Forman's movie is broader than Frears', it is also shallower.
What keeps the film interesting, if not riveting, is the generally on target casting and resulting topnotch interpretations.
Milos Forman's film is a mere confection in comparison to Stephen Frear's one, but in the way that confections can give real entertainment.
An unqualified dud.
Directed by Milos Forman, this film is livelier, more absorbing, and generally better acted than Dangerous Liaisons, which arrived a year ago. But it runs out of inspiration long before it runs out of plot twists.
Insufficiently racy in tone as well as pacing, this accomplished but bland costume drama is Dangerous Liaisons' poor cousin.
The effect is like an ermine violin: It is beautiful to look at, but it doesn't play.
The anachronistic brio which distinguishes Forman's style is in pleasurable evidence, the approach to the subject is very much his own, and it's worth seeing if you forget all about the original.
As in his mighty "Amadeus", Milos Forman again narrates a picaresque drama within aristocratic circles in this adaptation of "Les Liasons Dangereuses". Less energetic and lush than the one directed by Stephen Frears, even with a younger and fresher, cast. Forman bets for a subtler, classier approach and decides to concentrate solely on the tribulations of the character that names the film, finishing it before other characters' fate come to full circle. In my view, a controversial decision that gives the upper hand to Frears' previously released take on the same story.
Super Reviewer
It is interesting how wealthy 18th century aristocrats spend their time and efforts. It is funny; whenever I see a film from this era, instead of enjoying the stories of the aristocrats, I wonder about the lives of the common people who play the instruments or prepare the meals or wait on those rich.
I thought this was the better of the two 80's versions. Subtler.
Holy cra--You know how loads of non-American actors, when they're doing a movie that requires it, take the time to perfect their American accents? Why is it that so few American actors do the same thing when they are playing parts in movies that place them in countries outside the US? People like Paltrow can do it. Why is that?
Well, first off, ideally this would have been a script written in French. But if we're going to do the French-speak-English thing, then what is it with Benning? Is she on something in this? Horrors. A total embarrassment.
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