Valmont

The Marquise de Merteuil wants to use the Vicomte de Valmont to take revenge on a former lover. The plan is simple: Valmont will seduce Madame de Tourvel, known for her virtue. Halfway through the game Valmont actually falls in love, and it goes somewhere nobody calculated. Milos Forman directed, from Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's 1782 novel Les Liaisons dangereuses. Colin Firth plays Valmont, Annette Bening plays Merteuil and Meg Tilly plays Tourvel, with Fairuza Balk as the young Cecile and Henry Thomas as Danceny. It was shot in France, using Versailles and the Chateau de La Motte-Tilly. Its misfortune is timing. Stephen Frears's adaptation of the same novel, Dangerous Liaisons, had come out months earlier and collected Oscars. Valmont opened on 17 November 1989 and took only 1.1 million dollars domestically against a 33 million budget. The reviews divided. Roger Ebert wrote that it is more physical than the Frears version; Janet Maslin said it contributes virtually nothing to an understanding of the source. It was nominated for the Best Costume Design Oscar and won Cesars for costume and production design. Who it is for: viewers who like period intrigue and want to compare two readings of the same novel. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the sharpness of the Frears version. Forman makes his characters younger and more innocent, which visibly cuts the poison.