The entire plot is telegraphed from the beginning.
Sørensen is lovely and quite believable as Tourvel, but ginning up concern takes a lot of effort. Scheiber mumbles and seems preoccupied – can seducing these women be as critical as the text says it is? He seems more like a cat with a mouse than a man on a serious mission. While McTeer is magnificent as always, she cannot alone hold up the tent. She tells Cécile’s beau Le Chevalier Danceny (Raffi Barsoumian) of Valmonts’s transgression. Suffice to say that as the evening rolls out we see Valmont seduce and pretty much destroy both his targets – he does however, fall in love with Tourvel, and this so infuriates the Marquise that she turns on him. The Marquise tells Valmont, Love is something you use, not something you fall into… It is like medicine, you use it as a lubricant to nature. Betrayal and cruelty are their weapons of choice, and love is only a means of achieving their stated goals. Merteuil and Valmont, it seems, are joined in a mission to bring down as many people as possible – just for the hell of it. To seduce a woman for strict morals, religious ferver and the happiness of her marriage: What could possibly be more prestigious? Sounds like something someone would say on a press bus. She is staying with Valmont’s aunt while her husband is away on business. Madame de Tourvel (Birgitte Hjort Sørensen) is a young woman of superb reputation. For his late summer sport he is choosing another target. It’s all bout reputation ain’t it? And the guy comes first. This would make her former beau the laughing stock of the immediate universe. The Marquise proposes to Valmont that he get there first and deflower the girl. Cécile Volanges (Elena Kampouris) is ready to be plucked. That adventure has run its course and the Marquise’s old beau has his eyes on a young thing of 15 who has just been released from the convent and is endowed with blonde hair and an enormous allowance. It seems that both of their former lovers (it is kind of a mix and match mashup here) recently ran off with one another. But on this occasion the Marquise has other plans. La Marquise de Merteuil (the splendid Janet McTeer) and Le Vicomte de Valmont (Liev Schreiber) are former lovers who still share a mutual torch for one another.
Haven’t we all had enough of that splashed across every media outlet on the planet? Untimely because Les Liaisons Dangereuses is the story of aristocrats in 18th century France who have so much time on their hands that all they can think of is sex, money, and if if had been invented, rock ‘n’ roll. Tepid because most of these performances are without luster.
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