I decided to begin my trio of Les Liasons Dangereuses adaptations
with the most approachable and probably best-known adaptation, Cruel Intentions. I did watch it once before, many years ago, but had almost
entirely forgotten it since.
Obviously
Cruel Intentions is
very a modern retelling of the novel rather than a straight-up
adaptation, so I wasn't sure how faithful it would be. I was
surprised how well the general atmosphere and the concept of the
story translated from idle French aristocracy to overprivileged
American teenagers, and while several of the characters' relations to
each other had to be altered to fit with the new social structure,
the characters themselves were mostly very accurately transferred.
I did
wonder how well the necessary flattening of the age differences would
work (most notably the difference between Cécile and Danceny
compared to Valmont and the Marquise), but actually the difference in
their characters' relative life experiences in the film made it very
successful. The setting of the overdecorated, faux-historical houses
really captured the sense of corrupt decadence of the original novel.
One
thing that I felt was a shame was that the Marquise (or Kathryn) was
turned into such a clear-cut villain. I loved the fact that in the
original novel there was such moral ambiguity, and to me the Marquise
de Merteuil felt like an intelligent, independent (but admittedly
very selfish) woman bored out of her mind by the constricted, idle
role forced on her by society. Kathryn actually explicitly
makes this point in the film (“God forbid, I exude confidence and
enjoy sex! Do you think I relish the fact that I have to act like
Mary Sunshine 24/7 so I can be considered a lady?”), and this very
effectively sums up the double standards between genders present in
both the original novel and the modern adaptation. Cruel
Intentions, however, by making
Kathryn such an obvious villain, manages to undermine this protest
against ingrained gender roles and makes it part of being a bad
female role model. (That's my opinion anyway, but I did have a real
soft spot for the Marquise in the novel so perhaps I'm reading too
much into it!)
The
ending of the film was much lighter than the ending of the novel,
although I was impressed by the fact that they did commit to keeping
one death in, which gave the ending much more impact and poignancy
than the majority of American teen dramas.
Overall,
I really enjoyed it, and was pleasantly surprised how faithfully the
novel was adapted. A great film even if you haven't read the book.
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