Adapted from the novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
The Marquise de Merteuil wants her friend and ex-lover, the Vicomte de Valmont, to seduce the young and innocent Cécile Volange, who is about to become engaged to a man whom the Marquise despises. The Vicomte, however, feels that Cécile is too boring of a target, and declares that he would rather focus on Madame de Tourvel, a married woman known for her strict morals. Without losing sight of her plans for Cécile, the Marquise makes a deal with the Vicomte: if he is successful in his seduction of Madame de Tourvel, the Marquise will allow him to return to her own bed.
In terms of the events of the story, the film is remarkably consistent with the novel. Naturally, some parts were simplified, and a few minor subplots were eliminated, but overall the main events were shown essentially the way they were described in the book. However, the way the story is told changed so significantly that they feel different. The novel consists entirely of letters written by various characters to each other, whereas the movie shows the characters interacting with each other. This allows readers to see different perspectives of the same event, which is particularly interesting since Valmont and Merteuil are almost always lying to everyone else except each other, and the other characters often feel the need to conceal their true thoughts to keep their dignity. The movie, showing the events themselves rather than letters after the fact, relies on the actors to convey these deceptions to the audience. Thanks to the film's stellar cast, the characters' thoughts and motivations are still quite clear without being spelled out.
However, some things are sacrificed with the elimination of the letters. For instance, the film doesn't develop Cécile or the man she loves, Danceny, very much at all compared to the book, so we feel less invested in them, which is perhaps part of the reason the movie doesn't bother to tell us what happens to them at the end. Not that I can truly blame the screenwriter for sacrificing these rather vanilla characters in favor of the far more interesting, though despicable, Vicomte and Marquise. The film mostly focuses on their relationship, which is also arguably the main focus of the book, but their whole dynamic changes significantly when they're talking face-to-face instead of writing. As far as I remember, Valmont and Merteuil never actually meet up during the whole course of the book (if they do, it's very brief), but in the movie they have several in-person conversations. While what they say is mostly very similar to what their original counterparts wrote to each other, there's a lot more back-and-forth in a real conversation than in letter correspondence, so the pacing of their conversations is a lot faster in the film. In addition, often the book put several letters from other characters in between theirs, so the reader has to wait longer to find out how they respond to each other than the viewer. I'm not sure if it's a direct result of this change in format or not, but I noticed that both of them, but particularly the Marquise, appear a lot more vulnerable and human on screen than on the page. They're still horrible, but they seem more real when they're having conversations than just writing formal letters. The movie version of the Marquise seemed to me much more clearly in love with Valmont than she is in the book, but perhaps I wasn't reading between the lines enough. Though different, I think both versions of the Marquise/Vicomte relationship are quite effective, with the one caveat that because we haven't seen them write very many letters to each other in the movie, the part at the end when the letters are revealed doesn't quite have the same effect. Otherwise, although I didn't particularly enjoy the story itself, I thought both the book and the movie told it very well.
Much to my relief, after this story about people being terrible to each other, I get to move on to a sweet story about an unlikely friendship, the sixth Best Adapted Screenplay winner to also win both Best Picture and Best Actress: Driving Miss Daisy, based on the very short play by Alfred Uhry. So stay tuned for that soon.
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