7.4 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
It is pre-Revolution France. The Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close) and the Vicomte de Valmot (John Malkovich) are decadent members of the Paris aristocracy. The Marquise challenges the Vicomte to conquer young Cecile (Uma Thurman), the wife-to-be of an old friend. However, the perverse Vicomte prefers to work upon the seduction of Madame de Tourvel (Michelle Pfeiffer), a married and moral young aquaintance. The sexual and social repercussions of the seduction has disastrous effects.
Starring: Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Michelle Pfeiffer, Swoosie Kurtz, Keanu ReevesRomance | 100% |
Melodrama | 35% |
Period | 29% |
Erotic | 28% |
Drama | 27% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.85:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
French: Dolby Digital 2.0
Spanish: Dolby Digital 2.0
German: Dolby Digital 2.0
Italian: Dolby Digital 2.0
Portuguese: Dolby Digital 2.0
also Spanish (Castilian): Dolby Digital 2.0
English SDH, French, German SDH, Italian SDH, Portuguese, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 5.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Timing is everything. When French army officer Pierre Choderlos de Laclos published the book Les Liaisons dangereuses in 1782, it was considered trash. Only later was it elevated into one of the great works of Western literature, one of the most famous in a new form: a novel told exclusively in letters (the so-called "epistolary novel"), with the occasional wry observation by the "editor" of the compilation. Today, though, Laclos has few readers outside the academy. One of them was future playwright and filmmaker Christopher Hampton, who fell in love with the story as a student and thought it would make a great drama. No one in the British theater community shared Hampton's vision, but eventually he was able to get his inventive dramatization mounted in a tiny theater in the London equivalent of off-Broadway, where it was an immediate hit. It eventually transferred to the mainstream West End, where it ran for years, both in London and on Broadway. Among other things, the play launched the career of a previously unknown actor named Alan Rickman, who put his indelible stamp on the French philanderer Valmont long before the world came to know him as Hogwarts' Professor Snape. (Rickman didn't get to recreate his role in the film, but that same year he was everywhere on American movie screens as Hans Gruber in Die Hard.) Director Stephen Frears (The Queen) never saw Hampton's stage play and has said that, if he had, he'd have been too intimidated to make the movie. Having never read Laclos' novel either, Frears came to the project with no preconceptions, and his cinematic imagination was unencumbered. Hampton had already transformed the novel, inventing scene after scene that Laclos had never envisioned. In Laclos' world, his two main characters—the duplicitous Marquise de Merteuil and the serial seducer Valmont—corresponded but never met in person. Hampton repeatedly put them in the same room, where they schemed, traded confidences, battled and ultimately destroyed each other. Frears, who had never before done a period piece (or, as he called it, a movie "in frocks"), added the elaborate decor, costumes and environment that bred mentalities like that of Valmont and the Marquise, and he used well-chosen close-ups and suggestive blocking and framing to reveal layers and nuances of character that reward multiple viewings. The result was nominated for seven Oscars, including best picture, and won three, including for Hampton's script. Also, in a rare example of cross-cultural generosity, the French film industry honored Dangerous Liaisons with a César award for "Best Foreign Film", even though an English writer and director and a group of mostly American actors had dared to tinker with one of the country's national treasures.
"I thought betrayal was your favorite word." "No, no. Cruelty. I always think that has a nobler ring to it."
As Frears and Hampton note in their commentary, the photographic style for much of Dangerous Liaisons was borrowed from two previous period films, Fellini's Casanova and Barry Lyndon, where the brightest light source in the frame for key scenes is a candle. This challenging approach can yield a detailed image in the hands of a talented cinematographer like the Oscar-winning Philippe Rousselot (A River Runs Through It), but there's no way to avoid seeing the grain. Warner's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray retains both the detail and the grain, but viewers expecting that Blu-ray treatment will instantly convert this stylized period piece into a glossy Downton Abbey-like production will be disappointed. This was an analog creation from the photochemical world, and that's what the Blu-ray supplies. That the Blu-ray's reproduction of fine detail is impressive becomes evident as soon as one begins to study the patterns of fabrics and lace in James Acheson's Oscar-winning costumes, or the details in the furniture and decor in the Oscar-winning production design by Stuart Craig and Gérard James. That the muted colors and variable shadows of the many night interiors are accurately reproduced can be verified by reference to the late sequence depicting an outdoor duel in the snow near dawn, which could almost be in black-and-white and demonstrates that the transfer is capable of depicting both accurately. Daytime scenes, especially in the countryside, where natural light is more abundant, provide an array of subtly varying and distinctive colors. The grain patterns appear natural and undisturbed by digital manipulation. Indeed, there were moments, especially in wide shots, when it appeared to my eye that the grain might have picked up some additional video noise on its route from the analog to the digital realm. It seems, however, that Warner is so firmly against the use of DNR that it would rather leave in the noise than risk taking out the grain. I did not encounter any of the typical artifacts that result from artificial sharpening, nor were there any compression artifacts. (Additional note: A poster on another board who received an early copy of this title reported major distortion commencing with chapter 6 (when Valmont visits the peasant home) and spoke ominously of a "botched job". I have now played the review copy on three different setups (a Panasonic BD-50, a PS3 and a BD-ROM drive) and have seen no such problem.)
Dangerous Liaisons was released to theaters in stereo. The original track was remixed for 5.1 for the film's 1997 DVD, and the Blu-ray appears to contain the same track in a lossless DTS-HD MA presentation. The remix is conservative, keeping the voices and effects in the front and using the discrete format to expand the space in which George Fenton's score accentuates the drama (with assistance from Bach, Handel and Vivaldi). The orchestral arrangements sound perfectly fine in this presentation, but they don't have quite the sweep or the dynamic range that one might expect from a contemporary recording. The bass extension isn't as deep, the top end is a bit thin, and the mid-range isn't as full and well-rounded as in the best reproductions, but these are minor quibbles. The dialogue is certainly clear, a result not only of the recording but of the quality of the actors' delivery; they're playing articulate characters who speak in a stylized but contemporary idiom, and it's a point of pride to make their words understood, because those words are an essential part of their deceptive games.
One indicator of the success of Dangerous Liaisons at perfecting Hampton's dramatization of the novel is the degree to which the film has overshadowed the play that spawned it. A Broadway revival in 2008 with a first-rate cast felt wan and bloodless compared to the emotional depth and nuance that Frears captured from the film's cast and in the absence of the story additions that the film medium allowed. Examples of less-than-successful translations from stage to screen abound, but in this instance the stage version now appears to have been a resting point en route to the full-fledged and definitive version that is Frears's film, which is now, at long last, available on Blu-ray. Highly recommended.
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