J. Hoberman

The performances take some getting used to: Although the protagonists seem very American, the plebes speak with British accents. Malkovich has the best enunciation as well as the zippiest lines. "You should organize an infidelity, with me, for example," he tells Close, who, for the second film in a row, has to babe herself up as the hottest of femme fatales. (Her secret is a sort of dreamy narcissism--touching herself, Merteuil all but creams out of her gown.) . . . .

Shot mainly in close-ups, camera lingering on the principles' secret leer of triumph, Dangerous Liaisons is very much a landscape of faces . . . . Although Close arranges her expressions as carefully as her hairdo, the movie is, in the end, mainly motivated by Malkovich's seductive performance . . . .

J. Hoberman
Village Voice, December 27, 1988
left out little at end?