David Denby
Once devoted lovers and now constant confidants, the Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close) and the Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich) sport with the young and innocent. They do it for pleasure and, most of all, for power--especially power over each other (they respect no one else). . . .
. . . . When Valmont and the marquise confide their nasty schemes to each other, they often seem arch and movieish, perhaps because these two are the originals of all those vicious couples in glossy old Hollywood pictures, couples who were rotten and corrupt and therefore belonged together. But Madame de Tourvel--ardent, sincere, inflexible--is ruined by seduction, and when Pfeiffer takes the screen, the movie is at its most moving.
I suppose the marquise and Valmont deserve the gillotine that is about to fall. But reviewers who call them "decadent" are missing Laclos's point (Hampton's too). Bursting with plans and stratagems, inexhaustibly productive of lies, feints, and impostures, they are heroically energetic scoundrels who possess skills almost military and diplomatic in scale. Surely neither Laclos nor Hampton . . . intends us to reject them utterly. Most people, after all, want as much love, praise, and power as they can get; the vicomte and the marquise are among the few human beings in histroy privileged enough to fulfill those demands day after day. They are both like us and not like us, both human and inhuman, monsters of vanity who, at the same time, are susceptible to more feeling than they know. . . .
Like deep-sea creatures emerging from underwater grottoes, the two predators rise from silken beds at the beginning of the movie and, in matching sequences neatly cut together, allow their servants to dress them for the day. . . .
Glenn Close has the most complex part: The marquise is a fearless and intelligent woman who has somehow convinced herself that her cruelties avenge the wrongs done her sex. A terrible egotist, she loves Valmont because the heartless rogue is still a slave to her charms. God knows, Close is incisive and forceful, but Frears, in his only serious mistake, bores in on her too much, and the tihgt, "revealing" close-ups--ah, now the villainess gives herself away!--are as corny as the same kind of shots were in silent movies 60 years ago. Viewed so close, this actress is generally too sinister and calculating. But I admit she has a great moment at the end. That early dressing sequence, a methodical assembling of illusion, is matched, at the film's conclusion, after Valmont and the marquise have caused much suffering, by a parallel sequence of dis-illusionment. A ruined Marquise de Merteuil removes her wig, rubs away her powder, and suddenly looks old, almost ghostly. Stripped of her social mask, weakened, mortified, the marquise could be a failed actress resolved never to take to the boards again.
David Denby
New York, January 9, 1989
. . . . When Valmont and the marquise confide their nasty schemes to each other, they often seem arch and movieish, perhaps because these two are the originals of all those vicious couples in glossy old Hollywood pictures, couples who were rotten and corrupt and therefore belonged together. But Madame de Tourvel--ardent, sincere, inflexible--is ruined by seduction, and when Pfeiffer takes the screen, the movie is at its most moving.
I suppose the marquise and Valmont deserve the gillotine that is about to fall. But reviewers who call them "decadent" are missing Laclos's point (Hampton's too). Bursting with plans and stratagems, inexhaustibly productive of lies, feints, and impostures, they are heroically energetic scoundrels who possess skills almost military and diplomatic in scale. Surely neither Laclos nor Hampton . . . intends us to reject them utterly. Most people, after all, want as much love, praise, and power as they can get; the vicomte and the marquise are among the few human beings in histroy privileged enough to fulfill those demands day after day. They are both like us and not like us, both human and inhuman, monsters of vanity who, at the same time, are susceptible to more feeling than they know. . . .
Like deep-sea creatures emerging from underwater grottoes, the two predators rise from silken beds at the beginning of the movie and, in matching sequences neatly cut together, allow their servants to dress them for the day. . . .
Glenn Close has the most complex part: The marquise is a fearless and intelligent woman who has somehow convinced herself that her cruelties avenge the wrongs done her sex. A terrible egotist, she loves Valmont because the heartless rogue is still a slave to her charms. God knows, Close is incisive and forceful, but Frears, in his only serious mistake, bores in on her too much, and the tihgt, "revealing" close-ups--ah, now the villainess gives herself away!--are as corny as the same kind of shots were in silent movies 60 years ago. Viewed so close, this actress is generally too sinister and calculating. But I admit she has a great moment at the end. That early dressing sequence, a methodical assembling of illusion, is matched, at the film's conclusion, after Valmont and the marquise have caused much suffering, by a parallel sequence of dis-illusionment. A ruined Marquise de Merteuil removes her wig, rubs away her powder, and suddenly looks old, almost ghostly. Stripped of her social mask, weakened, mortified, the marquise could be a failed actress resolved never to take to the boards again.
David Denby
New York, January 9, 1989
posted by Intersections28 - David Gibson at
2:42 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home