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Average User Score: 8 (25 sources)

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comdr

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This to me was one of the most intelligent movies I've ever seen and have watched it countless times. The dialogue is amazing "I wanted you before I ever met you my self esteem demanded it." I mean come on that's legendary. "Like...
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This to me was one of the most intelligent movies I've ever seen and have watched it countless times. The dialogue is amazing "I wanted you before I ever met you my self esteem demanded it." I mean come on that's legendary. "Like most intellectuals, he's intensely stupid." or "I've always known I was meant to dominate your sex and avenge my own." I'm honestly surprised to see it linked to only 7 favs... ah well!

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Posted apr 26, 2008 11:36 pm pt

emerald999

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I like "costume dramas." I originally saw this on the stage in London and actually fell asleep at it! Well, the theatre was really hot, but that was no excuse. However, this film is one I can watch over and over. The love/hate...
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I like "costume dramas." I originally saw this on the stage in London and actually fell asleep at it! Well, the theatre was really hot, but that was no excuse. However, this film is one I can watch over and over. The love/hate relationship between Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close) and Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich) drives their behavior and causes them to seek to ruin the lives of others, whom they use as their playthings. It's like a big chess game they play to amuse the other person by showing how evil they can be. Malkovich is great in this and it may be the first film that showed me what a great actor he can be. His character evolves over the course of the film, while the Marquise doesn't and this is what eventually destroys both of them. There is enough comedy sprinkled in here to lighten things up (just about any scene with Uma Thurman's character) but overall it's quite serious drama.

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Posted may 18, 2007 3:20 am pt

• [+] Washington Post
  
  100
  A delectably naughty experience. This sort of wit and immediacy is extraordinarily rare in a period film.

  by Hal Hinson | Read Full Review »
• [+] Entertainment Weekly
  
  100
  Pfeiffer reveals an emotional nakedness that's almost shocking. Never has she exposed so much and done it so simply. Who knew she could be this good?

  by Lisa Schwarzbaum | Read Full Review »
• [+] The New Yorker
  
  100
  A first-rate piece of work by a director who's daring and agile... It's heaven – alive in a way that movies rarely are. [9 Jan 1989]

  by Pauline Kael | Read Full Review »
• [+] San Francisco Chronicle
  
  100
  In "Fatal Attraction" [Close] was a woman out of control. Here she's in control of her emotions, too much in control. When Merteuil finally lets loose and gives way to complete animal despair, Close is horrifying. [13 Jan 1989, Daily Datebook, p.E1]

  by Mick LaSalle | Read Full Review »
• [+] The New York Times
  
  90
  Nothing Miss Close has done on the screen before approaches the richness and comic delicacy of her work as the Marquise. [21 Dec 1988, p.C22]

  by Vincent Canby | Read Full Review »
• [+] TV Guide
  
  80
  Pfeiffer is a revelation in her part, almost stealing the film. Her relative stillness, masking internal unrest, makes her character seem more authentically "period" than her co-stars, who have adopted no formal period mannerisms.

  by Staff (Non Credited) | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Reader
  
  80
  The film seems a bit studied, but the creepy plot still holds a certain fascination.

  by Jonathan Rosenbaum | Read Full Review »
• [+] Time
  
  80
  An excellent film. [16 Jan 1989, p.64]

  by Richard Corliss | Read Full Review »
• [+] Los Angeles Times
  
  80
  In addition to its photography, the film's details of costuming (by "The Last Emperor's" James Acheson) and production design (by Stuart Craig of "Gandhi" and "The Mission") are ravishing. [21 Dec 1988, Calendar p.6]

  by Sheila Benson | Read Full Review »
• [+] USA Today
  
  75
  The distanced result, screen-adapted by playwright Christopher Hampton, never quite overwhelms you. [21 Dec 1988, Life, p.1D]

  by Mike Clark | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Sun-Times
  
  75
  If there is anything lacking in the movie, it may be a certain gusto. The director, Stephen Frears, is so happy to make this a tragicomedy of manners that he sometimes turns away from obvious payoffs.

  by Roger Ebert | Read Full Review »
• [+] Washington Post
  
  70
  Malkovich's lead performance digs in its heels, deadening the movie's speedy exhilaration. The result is a highly diverting but ultimately unsatisfying production that doesn't perform -- so much as paraphrase -- the script.

  by Desson Thomson | Read Full Review »
• [+] The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
  
  63
  No matter how many times the script instructs us that Valmont is "conspicuously charming," Malkovich is not charming, conspicuously or otherwise.

  by Jay Scott | Read Full Review »
• [+] Variety
  
  60
  The real problem is Malkovich's Valmont. This sly actor conveys the character's snaky, premeditated Don Juanism. But he lacks the devilish charm and seductiveness one senses Valmont would need to carry off all his conquests.

  by Staff (Not Credited) | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Tribune
  
  50
  Though the costumes are beautifully designed, the chateau locations carefully chosen and the dialogue full of curling locutions, something cloddish and naive still comes through in Frears' direction, and not only because he can seldom get his shots to match. [13 Jan 1989, Friday, p.A]

  by Dave Kehr | Read Full Review »