Valmont (R)
IMDb; MGM; Rotten Tomatoes; Wikipedia
streaming sites: Amazon; iTunes

So I guess this is based on the same book as the movie "Dangerous Liaisons," but I haven't seen that movie as yet, nor read the book, so I can't really compare it to anything. Anyway, I thought it was kind of interesting, but twisty, and sometimes I found the twists more confusing or annoying than anything else. Which is a shame cuz I'm usually a fan of twists. Anyway, it's set in 18th century France. There's this girl named Cecile (Fairuza Balk), who her mother has arranged a marriage for with this older guy named Gercourt. Who has just broken up with his lover, Merteuil (Annette Bening). She's a friend of Cecile's mother, which is convenient, because both she and her daughter take her into their confidence, each thinks Merteuil is on her side, but they're both wrong. She's really only on her own side. She mainly just wants to manipulate people, the main purpose of which is to get revenge against Gercourt, I guess. And she wants to do this by making sure Cecile isn't a virgin when they wed. First she wants her friend, the womanizing Valmont (Colin Firth), to take Cecile's virginity, but he thinks he's in love with a married woman named Tourvel (Meg Tilly). She doesn't want to betray her husband, who is constantly away on business, but Valmont slowly wears her down. Meanwhile, Cecile has a music teacher named Danceny, and they are in love with each other, which her mother cannot abide.

Well, anyway, I don't want to give away any of the twists, but... Meh, I dunno. It's weird and complicated and I never managed to care too much about any of it. I mean, I think Cecile and Danceny were the only characters I liked at all, but they were both too easily manipulated by everyone. Still, I felt kind of bad for pretty much everyone, even the people I didn't like. And the end... didn't seem like much of an end to me. Dunno what else to say.