Tag: Cruel Intentions

Get On My Love Train

Monday morning and back to the office blog! I feel awake, but kind of not completely yet, if that makes sense? It does in my fevered brain, at any rate. I didn’t get as much done this weekend as I wanted to, but I did get some things done. I did some actual writing yesterday, and I did get some work done on something else I’m working on. Not a great weekend for productivity, but I feel like I can face the office this morning. That’s a plus, right? It’s always good to start off the week feeling refreshed and rested both physically and mentally, right? So I am not sorry the weekend was wasted, because it really wasn’t. Likewise, the writing isn’t very good, but at least I did some, you know? It was excruciating getting a thousand words down, but I did, and while it didn’t alleviate my mind about getting back in the writing saddle, it’s something.

Paul wasn’t feeling well yesterday, so last night we started watching the new Prime show Cruel Intentions last night, and it’s better than I was expecting. I am a big fan of the original story (the book was Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos; obviously filmed as Dangerous Liaisons with Glenn Close and John Malkovich), so was curious how this adaptation would work. The remake of the story as Cruel Intentions, with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Philippe, set at an exclusive elite school for the rich, was quite excellent–so I was curious about the new version, which updates the story yet again, this time to an exclusive college’s Greek system. I love this story, and did an homage to it in one of my erotic novels–which I wish I could get a do-over on, to be honest. I may need to reread the book again at some point, too. I love my conniving nasty French nobles, you know?

One thing I’ve not remarked on yet–mainly because I keep forgetting every morning–is to mention the shockingly excellent news that four queer writers were included on Sarah Weinman’s Best Crime Novels of 2024 in the New York Times! Three of them–John Copenhaver (Hall of Mirrors), Margot Douaihy (Blessed Water), and Robyn Gigl (Nothing But the Truth) are friends; the other, Katrina Carrasco (Rough Trade) is someone I don’t know but have been aware of for quite some time. I actually blurbed Blessed Water, which is exceptional. I do want to revisit it in order to write about it, and I have yet to get to John’s book–and I am very behind on Robyn’s series. But how wonderful is this? Not just one, but four queer authors on an important Best of column in the paper of record (which I still haven’t forgiven for its crimes of the last decade at least)? When I was first starting in this business, we didn’t even dare to dream of that kind of outcome for our books; and Sarah is so smart and knowledgeable about crime fiction and the genre–she absolutely knows what she’s talking about. I always enjoy talking to her, and this is so awesome for the queer authors; it’s the first sign from the Times that queer work is just as valid as other crime fiction! So, thank you, Sarah!

And it’s nice to see some diversity of thought in that vile paper for a change.1

So, I am hoping to get this work done so I can get back to writing. I owe some short stories I need to get underway, I need to get back to work on Scotty, and I am also writing this other thing, too. I’m starting to feel like I’m lazy, more than anything else, and finding excuses not to work anymore. This shall not stand.

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. May you have a Monday as lovely as you are, Constant Reader, and one never knows–I may be back later.

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  1. And no, this doesn’t mean I’ll resubscribe. I will never forgive them for their role in undermining democracy and the rule of law. ↩︎

The Second Time

Saturday morning and LSU plays at eleven, which means I have an extremely short window to get things this morning. I fell asleep in my chair watching the debut episode of Dangerous Liaisons, which was a great idea for a series in theory, but I wasn’t impressed with the execution. I doubt we’ll continue with it–a shame, because it’s one of my favorite stories of all time; I read the original novel after the Glenn Close film was released in the 1980’s and have loved it ever since. (I also love the Cruel Intentions adaptation of it; I even adapted it into my gay erotic fraternity novel Wicked Frat Boy Ways) It also rained overnight–I slept very deeply and well last night–and of course I woke at five again this morning but napped on and off until rising just before eight.

LSU can actually clinch the West Division of the SEC today with a win over Arkansas–either outright and a share of it; should Alabama beat Mississippi today, it’s theirs if they win. If Mississippi wins, the pressure is back on LSU to win out; both would end up tied for the West if they both win out, but LSU goes to the championship game by virtue of having beaten Mississippi when they played. It’s a very chaotic college football season, folks; the kind that rarely comes around and things happen that never usually happen. (I still can’t believe LSU beat Alabama last week.) Just a month ago, things looked very bleak for the season indeed for LSU, and I am so proud of how they bounced back after that embarrassing loss to Tennessee. Several things happened this year that have never happened before: LSU had never beaten both Auburn and Florida on the road in the same season before, let alone beaten them both on the road AND beat Alabama. LSU hadn’t beaten Alabama in Baton Rouge since 2010 (the last time Alabama had lost twice this early in the season–but I doubt they will go on to lose to Auburn in the Iron Bowl as they did in 2010), hadn’t beat Florida four years in a row since 1977-1980, and the Tennessee loss was the first time the Vols have beat LSU since 2005.

Okay, I’ll stop boring you with my football fandom. GEAUX TIGERS!

Although I have to add I don’t know how I’ll manage to stay calm during the LSU game–and today I find myself rooting for Alabama. College football always gets interesting later in the season…

I’m going to try to work on edits during the games today; I am not sure how well that is going to go. I’m probably not going to leave the house this weekend outside of a lunch date tomorrow; I really need to work on the book and I’m even going to have to (sigh) not watch the Saints game tomorrow and work instead. I’m running out of time on my deadline, which is terrifying to me, and I have a lot of other things I have to write as well. I really need to make a thorough and complete to-do list; maybe after I finish and post this. I did get a lot of chores done yesterday around the work-at-home duties; laundry and dishes and the kitchen are under control this morning, so I don’t need to do anything this weekend on that score. But whoa boy, was I worn out once five thirty rolled around. I repaired to my chair and watched Youtube videos (and yes, I watched the LSU-Alabama highlights again because I still can’t believe LSU beat Alabama)–I watched a really great historical one about the fall of Constantinople in 1204 to the 4th Crusade, and another interesting one about the camp aesthetic of Mommie Dearest–until Paul got home, and we got caught up on Andor, which I am really enjoying; I’ve actually enjoyed all the Star Wars television shows other than The Book of Boba Fett, which I should probably give another chance to, before switching to Dangerous Liaisons, which was, frankly, boring and the revised plot doesn’t make much sense–a wealthy older noblewoman would not be able to confer a title on anyone; that was the prerogative of the King and the King only, especially in absolutist France of the eighteenth century, so yeah–it wasn’t just being tired. I can forgive historical inaccuracies as a necessity for dramatizations, but being so blatant and deliberate in being wrong like that for the purpose of plot and story is something I cannot condone by rewatching. I am not a purist either when it comes to adaptations of novels into series and films, either–I enjoyed Cruel Intentions, after all–but in all honesty, there was so much more to the original story that had to be cut and removed from any film adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses that could have been implemented into telling the story over the course of a season–perhaps even a second–and the fallout and aftermath from the exposure of the Marquise de Merteuil’s letters could have also been interesting.

Ah, well. Great idea, poor execution.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. The game starts in less than two hours (!!!) and I need to get some things done. Have a happy Saturday, Constant Reader!

The Girl Is Mine

I’ve never been an enormous fan of Reese Witherspoon; I think she has talent and she had really shone in some things I’ve seen her in (Legally Blonde, Election, Cruel Intentions) but there was always just something about her, though, that set my teeth a little on edge; nothing I can explain, but she just always struck me as the “I need to speak to your manager” type. But her television work has turned me into a fan, and not just because she’s been killing it in shows like Big Little Lies, The Morning Show, and Little Fires Everywhere…she’s been terrific in all of these shows, but the bigger picture is these shows have introduced me to two writers with whose work I’ve become enamored; Liliane Moriarity and Celeste Ng. Moriarity has more of a backlist than Ng, who only has published two novels; I’m working my way through Moriarty as of yet, and loving her work, but Celeste Ng is a whole other story.

Little Fires Everywhere was a terrific novel, and I was holding off on reading her debut, Everything I Never Told You, primarily because I didn’t want to run out of work by Celeste Ng to read (one of my weird predilections; I never want to run out of books by writers I love). But during the aftermath of Ida and with no power, I picked it up, started reading, and didn’t put it down until hours later, when I’d finished.

Lydia is dead. But they don’t know this yet. 1977, May 3, six thirty in the morning, no one knows anything but this innocuous fact: Lydia is late for breakfast. As always, next to her cereal bowl, her mother has placed a sharpened pencil and Lydia’s Physics homework, six problems flagged with small ticks. Driving to work, Lydia’s father nudges the dial toward WXKP, Northwest Ohio’s Best News Source, vexed by the crackle of static. On the stairs, Lydia’s brother yawns, still twined in the tail end of his dream. And in her chair in the corner of the kitchen, Lydia’s sister hunches moon-eyed over her cornflakes sucking them to pieces one by one, waiting for Lydia to appear. It’s she who says, at last, “Lydia’s taking a long time today.”

Upstairs, Marilyn opens her daughter’s door and sees the bed unslept in: neat hospital corners still pleated beneath the comforter, pillow still fluffed and convex. Nothing seems out of place. Mustard-colored corduroys tangled on the floor, a single rainbow-striped sock. A row of science fair ribbons on the wall, a postcard of Einstein. Lydia’s duffel bag crumpled on the floor of her closet. Lydia’s green bookbag slouched against her desk. Lydia’s bottle of Baby Soft atop the dresser, a sweet, powdery, loved-baby scent still in the air. But no Lydia.

One of the things that strikes me as curious about Ng’s work is that it’s set in the past; Little Fires Everywhere was set in the 90’s, and this, her debut, is set in 1977. Not, of course, that there’s anything wrong with writing stories set in the past, mind you, it’s just an observation. But the two books have very strong themes and look at the roles of women in the society in which they were born; that entire thing about “having it all” (which is mythology, of course; no one is superhuman enough to “have it all”) and the bitter reality that a woman cannot, ever, no matter how hard she works and no matter how much effort she puts into it, achieve this mysteriously, vaguely defined “all” she is theoretically able to have. It’s still a problem for women in our current time; the inability for gender roles to be completely redefined, for one, despite the fact that society and culture have dramatically changed and shifted over the last few decades (four or five of them, at the very least).

Anyway, I digress.

The Lee family, who live in a small college town near Dayton in Ohio, are a typical American family. Dad teaches at the university, Mom is a housewife and mom, and their two eldest children are academic stars at the local high school. The youngest child is a mere afterthought, an asterisk, to whom no one really pays much attention. Both parents are completely wrapped up in Lydia, their second child; much to the detriment of the oldest, Nathan (Nath). Lydia is soon found when they drag the nearby lake; whether she committed suicide, it was an accident, or foul play is pretty much up in the air–although they did find her things in a small rowboat floating out in the middle of the water, so accident or suicide is most likely, but Mom Marilyn refuses to believe her child could or would do such a thing and therefore it must be murder!

This is, of course, a classic set-up for a crime novel or a novel about families; the twist here is that James, the husband/father, is Chinese-American (his parents were immigrants) and Marilyn the mom, is white and from Virginia.; therefore their children are bi-racial, and this was still kind of a “thing” in the 1970’s (not that it isn’t still, of course; progress has been made but it’s also been rather on the slow side, really). When James and Marilyn marry, miscegenation laws are still on the books; Marilyn’s own mother is such a racist bitch she says horrible things to Marilyn on her wedding day–which is the last time Marilyn sees or speaks to her mother. They are the only Asians in their little college town, which also impacts the kids and how they see, not only their parents, but the world. Marilyn is also a frustrated feminist; she wanted to be a doctor, took Science classes against the advise of teachers and advisors, and only gives up on her dreams when she becomes pregnant and marries James, becomes a wife and mother….and channels all her frustrated hopes and dreams onto her daughter, Lydia–who has a lot of trouble, as we see over the course of the book, living up to those hopes and dreams. There are no villains or heroes in this book; just complicated human beings doing their best to get through their lives–and how the things unsaid to each other, for whatever reason…and as we get to know each character and their own foibles and flaws and dreams, they become fully realized, and the reader cannot help but love and empathize with them. The story structure, after the present day opening with Lydia dead, flashes back and forth between the present and the past, as we learn the story of the Lees and their broken hopes and dreams; watch them deal with the horrific and completely inexcusable casual racism of their white neighbors and classmates; as Marilyn meets women who followed their dreams and envies them, wonders how they managed to do it; and there’s also a queer subtext/plot thread that is handled delicately and beautifully–if perhaps not realistically for small town Ohio in the 1970’s; whatever issues I may have with the realism of the story in the time in which it is said can easily be set aside because of how beautifully Ng does it as an author.

Everything I Never Told You is an absolute gem of a novel, and I can highly recommend it.

What Have I Done to Deserve This?

It’s Saturday, and how lovely that feeling is. I am going to try to avoid social media as well as email interactions this weekend, as I want to be productive and I really don’t need any help with getting distracted. I was a condom packing machine yesterday, and Scooter was happily cuddled up to my feet as I had my lap desk and was working. I finally came up with the working system for maximum efficiency, and ultimately I was able to double my productivity in the same amount of time, which was quite impressive. It had been bothering me that I wasn’t as fast at home as I was at the office–or rather, in my old office on Frenchmen Street–but I also didn’t have the proper set-up until yesterday. I also had taken some time on Thursday to fold inserts, which also sped up my time yesterday. I also watched this week’s Real Housewives episodes, rewatched “The Bells” episode of Game of Thrones season eight (it’s quite a spectacle; more on that later) and then Dangerous Liaisons and The Maltese Falcon on the TCM menu on HBO MAX (which I love; there’s so much excellent film on that menu–things I want to rewatch and things I’ve always wanted to see). After dinner we finished off watching Into the Night, which had a lovely cliffhanger, and then started a Mexican Netflix drama, Control Z, which is quite intense. I do have to run an errand today, and I do have to spend some time cleaning out my email inbox–it’s ridiculously out of control again (doesn’t take long!)–and then I am going to reread Bury Me in Shadows and make notes on what to keep and what has to change. I’d also like to spend some time with “A Holler Full of Kudzu,” but there’s only so much time in one day and I only have so much attention span, really.

It’s gloomy and overcast out there this morning; we’re expecting rain off and on for most of the weekend because of now-Hurricane Hannah. I slept fairly decently most of the night, but still woke up feeling a little tired this morning. As much as I would like to be lazy for the day–and really, rereading a manuscript is the epitome of lazy, since I’ll be doing it in my easy chair–but it’s quite interesting and sort of amazing how much of a difference a good night’s sleep makes in my productivity when it comes to writing. The more tired I am, the more snappish I become–so it’s always a good idea to not be on social media or answer emails, as little things really get under my skin when I’m in that condition–but hopefully that won’t be an issue this evening. We shall see, I suppose.

I’m not really sure why I got the bug in my ear to rewatch that episode of Game of Thrones–it’s really amazing, given what a cultural phenomenon the show was while it was airing, how little anyone talks about it anymore. I think this is primarily due to the enormous disappointment the majority of viewers felt with its conclusion, and I certainly can’t disagree with those disappointed feelings. I, too, wasn’t terribly pleased with how the show ended, but at the same time, I wasn’t expected this world–which mirrored actual history with all its gore and good-doesn’t-always-win and evil-sometimes-goes-unpunished reality–to come to a happy ending; although Sansa did wind up as Queen of the North, so at least there’s some sense of justice in that, after everything she went through. And with her red hair, and all the suffering she endured, an argument could be made that she was sort of based on Queen Elizabeth I–who against incredible odds and twenty-five years of living in the shadow of the executioner–finally climbed to the throne. But I want to talk more about “The Bells” and the sack of King’s Landing–which was another episode that had fans disappointed and outraged. I was one of the few fans who was all about the city being destroyed; and I was also really pleased that they showed it from the ground for the most part–with Daenarys and Drogon only seen from below as the city burns and people die. It was exactly how I imagined the sacking of cities throughout history to look–rape and murder, blood in the streets, pillaging, hysterical terrified crowds running for their lives and praying for sanctuary as their world collapses around them. Conquerers never showed mercy; the concept everyone was hoping for that to happen once the bells were rung is very modern. Cities have historically been subject to such sackings throughout history; maybe not with a dragon involved, but read accounts of the many times Rome fell, or the fall of Constantinople–this wasn’t a modern world by any means, and modern concepts of justice and mercy weren’t in play. Cersei herself said it in Season One: “when you play the game of thrones, you either win or you die.” She played, she died, and she took her capital city with her. Power politics in medieval history–the closest proximation to the world of Game of Thrones–were bloody and cruel and merciless, and the Popes and the Church were just as involved and as ruthless as any king or emperor. Arya even alluded to this when she was wearing the face of Walder Frey and wiping out his entire house: “You didn’t kill all of the Starks. You should have ripped them out, root and stem. Leave one wolf alive and the sheep are never safe.” Ergo–if you don’t kill all of your enemies, you have no one but yourself to blame when they kill you.

Dangerous Liaisons is a great movie, and a great story as well. When the film came out, I bought a copy of the novel and was enthralled by the petty games of seduction and revenge that played out in its pages. (I didn’t see the film until years later, when I rented the video; I’ve seen both the Glenn Close version and the Annette Bening, Valmont; and of course the modern day remake with Ryan Philippe and Sarah Michelle Gellar, Cruel Intentions. There was an earlier, modern day version made in the 1960’s I’ve not seen; it’s in French and I’ve always wanted to see it.) The novel is exceptional; originally published (and banned) in France in 1782, it was quite a cause celebre at the time; depicting the immorality and debauchery of the aristocratic class, it has sometimes been described as being one of the initial steps on the road to revolution in 1789. It’s an epistolary novel; you are reading the letters the characters all write to one another, so you see how the Marquise and the Vicomte are playing with their innocent, naive friends and relatives quite well. They are only honest with each other–although, of course, in this modern age the lesson I took from it was never put anything in writing, which is just as true today as it was then–and I had always wanted to do a modern, gay version. I eventually did, with Wicked Frat Boy Ways, but while I am proud of the book I also wish I could redo it some, revise and add to it more.

The film is extraordinary, and Glenn Close was certainly robbed–as she has been many times–of the Oscar for Best Actress.

As for The Maltese Falcon, it’s still a great movie, but I didn’t finish watching–and would prefer to rewatch when I can give it my full attention. It really is marvelously written, acted, directed, and filmed. I should probably reread the novel someday.

And on that note, I am going to dive back into the spice mines. The kitchen and living room are both a mess; I have errands to run, and of course, that manuscript to read. Have a lovely, safe Saturday, Constant Reader, and I will see you tomorrow.

Picture to Burn

Good morning, Constant Reader! It’s my official release day for my latest Todd Gregory tome, Wicked Frat Boy Ways, which I am kind of excited about. For one thing, I love the cover. For another, I am kind of proud of this book. I did something completely different than anything I’ve ever done before, and it’s also an homage to one of my favorite stories of all time: Les Liaisons Dangereuses. (I’ve also discovered that young people will just look at me blankly when I mention that; or even say Dangerous Liaisons, the award winning film with Glenn Close and John Malkovich from the late 1980’s; however, mention Cruel Intentions with Ryan Phillippe and Sara Michelle Gellar, and their eyes will light up.) It’s a wonderful story; after all, to date, there are four film versions thus far, and a stage version. The Glenn Close movie inspired Madonna’s MTV Video Awards performance of “Vogue”–which I absolutely loved. I am a sucker for the costumes of that era; Bourbon France (1589-1792) is one of my favorite periods of history; the French Revolution is endlessly fascinating to me (Les Liaisons Dangereuses was set in the early 1780’s, and there are those who call the at-the-time scandalous novel as one of the flagstones in the pathway to the French Revolution, by pointing out the corruption and evil behavior that boredom amongst the wealthy and spoiled aristocracy in France to a wider audience); and so my personal favorite film version of the story are the Glenn Close with the Annette Bening/Colin Firth Valmont coming in second. But Cruel Intentions is also very well done, and both Phillippe and Gellar inhabit the evil characters absolutely perfectly. I’ve always wanted to do my own version of the story; but I wanted to follow the novel (which I absolutely loved, and have reread several times) more so than the film.

I’ve played with the idea a lot over the years; the trick is that the novel is epistolary. The epistolary novel was very popular in previous centuries (Dracula is also epistolary for the most part; a mix of letters and diary entries), although it has fallen out of favor in modern times. I’ve always thought they were great; it was a way to get inside character heads much more so than just alternating third-person point of views, and it’s even harder to do alternating first person point of views–which I also didn’t know how to do, and was afraid to try (Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying is perhaps the best example of this ever published). I thought about doing it in the form of emails years ago, and then. after Bold Strokes agreed to publish it, tried to figure out how to do it with modern technology–a combination of texts messages, emails, Facebook posts, etc. But that would also be a formatting nightmare for the technical side of publishing;  I even asked the formatter how it could be done, and the response wasn’t encouraging.

And then I reread one of my favorite books, The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis, and I saw how it could be done–alternating first person point of view, present tense; in other words, tell the story in the present from the point of view of characters as it is happening to them, so you can also see, as in the letters, how their perspectives change and how the manipulations happen, and how they really feel. Yes, it was similar to how Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying, but at the same time, it was a challenge I wanted to take on: an erotic novel with a strong plot, told in the present tense, in alternating first person point of view.

Instead of using the same Beta Kappa chapter at CSU-Polk, I moved it to another campus; one that is more rich and more elite: the University of California at San Felice (a shout out to Margaret Millar, who used San Felice in some of her novels as a stand-in for Santa Barbara), on the California coast a few hours north of Los Angeles. I had the character of Brandon Benson, from Games Frat Boys Play, transfer and now he’s a senior, friends with Phil Connors, chapter president. Phil and Brandon are the primary characters in the story; the others the chess pieces they move around the board; Ricky Monterro is the nephew of a very wealthy self-made lawyer who is president of the alumni association, and a recent drop out from the seminary at Notre Dame who’s just realized he doesn’t want to be a priest, preferring to live openly and honestly as a gay man; Dylan, an incoming transfer from UCLA who is engaged to a soldier on a tour in the Middle East; and Kenny, a shy young gay virgin with no self-esteem who falls head over heels for Ricky at first sight.

Jordy from Games Frat Boys Play even makes an appearance, having rented a house on Fire Island for the summer, which is where Brandon and Dylan first run into each other.

Damn, this book was fun to write. Hope it’s as fun to read!

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Bella Donna

I’ve been, over the course of the last week, rereading Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos; originally published in 1782 as the sun set on the absolute Bourbon monarchy. My interest and curiosity in the novel had been piqued by watching the two competing film versions of the same story that had come out in the same time period; the more famous Dangerous Liaisons and the overshadowed Valmont. The book had been adapted into a quite successful play; the play was the basis for the former film while the book served as the template for the latter–the director, Milos Forman, had been intrigued by the play but the rights had already gone; the book, however was in the public domain and he was determined to film his story. Even now, I wonder about the wisdom of his decision and his financial backers. Dangerous Liaisons wound up being an enormous hit and was nominated for a boatload of Oscars; his film came out second and was mostly overlooked. I preferred Valmont at the time, for reasons I shall explain; but on reviewing the films it is clearly the inferior of the two.

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I also thought it was interesting that publishers associated the book in print with the first film…

The story itself has always, always, fascinated me; it is incredibly dark, and rather on the noir side. Madame de Merteuil, a widow (her title is actually Marquise), is angry because her lover, the Comte de Gercourt, has left her to become affianced to her young cousin Cecile Volanges; a fifteen year old innocent who has been living and being educated in a convent. It is this innocence that Gercourt is attracted to; and as an affianced husband he no longer requires a mistress. The Marquise’ jealousy is, of course, primarily motivated by ego; men do not leave her. So she concocts a scheme to despoil the innocence of young Cecile, and wants to enlist her dear friend, the Vicomte de Valmont, to seduce the girl and turn her into a wanton so that on her wedding night Gercourt would not only be disappointed but humiliated; she also thinks Valmont will help her because in the past, Gercourt had seduced a mistress of Valmont’s. But seducing a virgin isn’t the kind of challenge a practiced roué as Valmont; his interest lies in seducing Madame de Tourvel, a deeply religious and devoted wife whose husband is away on business, nor does he particularly feel the need for revenge against Gercourt. So the Marquise instead has to find another method of having the young girl seduced, and the story goes from there.

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I love the book. It’s extraordinary; and it is an epistolary novel, told and advanced through the letters of everyone involved in this game of seduction and the corruption of innocence and virtue. The reader is thus able to engage with each player, and Laclos is able to create each character and their voice distinctly. It’s also a fascinating character study; as the Vicomte and the Marquise explain to each other each step in their game–eventually leading to a bet between the two; if Valmont is somehow able to accomplish his seduction of Tourvel, the Marquise will be his for one night. But also, we see Tourvel’s letters to the Vicomte as she tries to resist him; her letters to friends where she talks about the struggle in her own soul between virtue and sin. We see Cecile’s letters to her friend Sophie, back in the convent, as her own innocence and childhood is slowly taken away from her as she is first excited and scared at the thought of her impending marriage; her innocent, almost childlike love for her music instructor, the Chevalier Danceny (whom the Marquise, having failed at getting Valmont to seduce Cecile, targets to be Cecile’s despoiler), and then her ultimate education into sensuality by Valmont (who finally does seduce Cecile and take her as his mistress to revenge himself on her mother, who has written disparagingly about him to Tourvel and thus hindered his seduction of her). The letters between the Marquise and Valmont also reveal how they became the way they are; their own brief affair which ended when they recognized in each other another such as themselves and decided to be friends and allies instead, and the ultimate game they are actually playing with each other.

The original film, with Glenn Close and John Malkovich in the leads, with Michelle Pfeiffer as Tourvel, Uma Thurman as Cecile, Keanu Reeves as Danceny, and Swoosie Kurtz as Cecile’s mother Madame de Volanges, was very sumptuously filmed; gorgeous sets and costumes and cinematography. But I was repelled by it when I watched it; I couldn’t really believe either Close or Malkovich as these master seducers–although I readily believed them as manipulators. The film itself seemed incredibly cold and dark to me. I much preferred Valmont; with Colin Firth and Annette Bening in the roles, with Meg Tilly as Tourvel, Fairuza Balk as Cecile, Henry Thomas (from E.T. now a young man) as Danceny, and the amazing Sian Phillips as Cecile’s mother. The backstory is set up better–we see Gercourt dumping the Marquise brutally, for example, and Bening and Firth are just so luminously beautiful it was easier to believe they’d be able to seduce pretty much anyone.

tumblr_l89but6kut1qzu6rfo1_1280I read the book after seeing the films; I’ve reread it several times, and after rereading it this last time and rewatching the movies, I am not ashamed to say that I was wrong originally. <I>Dangerous Liaisons</I> is more true to the book as it was written; that coldness, the dark viciousness at the heart of the novel drives that movie far more than it does <I>Valmont</i>; the main characters aren’t quite as dark and nasty and chilling in the second version; she’s simply a woman scorned and he’s just kind of a dick. That sense of evil entitlement that Close and Malkovich embraced and played to the hilt; that seductive sleaziness just isn’t there.

And I now prefer the first film.

It was adapted yet again in the late 1990’s as Cruel Intentions and updated to the world of a modern day prep school and filthy rich kids, with beautiful Ryan Philippe and Sarah Michelle Gellar in the leads as step-siblings, Reese Witherspoon in the Tourvel role as a young girl who’s kind of became the spokesperson for modern virtue and virginity pledges, and Selma Blair as Cecile; whom Catherine’s latest boyfriend has left her for. It takes place over the summer between semesters–and the motivation for Gellar as Catherine to have Cecile seduced, and the reason her boyfriend leaves her for Cecile, doesn’t really play as well. (In an interesting aside, Swoosie Kurtz appears early in the movie as Sebastian’s–the modern day Vicomte–therapist whose daughter he seduces. The darkness at the heart of the story is there in this adaptation, making it even darker as it is about cynical teenagers/high school students. I intend to watch it again; I’ll probably talk about it here once I do.

 

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And now back to the spice mines.