"Lust. Seduction. Revenge. The game as you've never seen it played before."
In 18th century France, Marquise de Merteuil asks her ex-lover Vicomte de Valmont to seduce the future wife of another ex-lover of hers in return for one last night with her. Yet things don’t go as planned.
Glenn Close
Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil
John Malkovich
Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont
Michelle Pfeiffer
Madame Marie de Tourvel
Uma Thurman
Cécile de Volanges
Swoosie Kurtz
Madame de Volanges
Keanu Reeves
Le Chevalier Raphael Danceny
Mildred Natwick
Madame de Rosemonde
Peter Capaldi
Azolan
Joe Sheridan
Georges
In 18th century France, Marquise de Merteuil asks her ex-lover Vicomte de Valmont to seduce the future wife of another ex-lover of hers in return for one last night with her. Yet things don’t go as planned.
"Dangerous Liaisons" is unquestionably one of the most captivating films to come along in quite some time. It is a visually stunning film and it makes extremely good use of some exceptional locations and interiors and the excruciatingly uncomfortable looking and cumbersome costumes are exquisitely authentic. Of course there are many people out there who will automatically shy away upon learning this is a period film and for good reason. Such films can by their very nature often be obscure and lack any meaning in the modern age. They are slow moving with arcane and unengaging dialogue and the tiresome plot can have no substance or consequence and it can lack momentum. This film has none of these failings and it is an incredibly well paced work of excellence throughout whose ensemble of characters go on the most unanticipated journeys to essentially the same destination: ruination.
Set in Baroque France, a scheming widow and her lover make a bet regarding the corruption of a recently married woman. The lover, Valmont, bets that he can seduce her, even though she is an honorable woman. If he wins, he can have his lover to do as he will. However, in the process of seducing the married woman, Valmont falls in love.
Reporter Charles Wills, in Paris to cover the end of World War II, falls for the beautiful Helen Ellswirth following a brief flirtation with her sister, Marion. After he and Helen marry, Charles pursues his novelistic ambition while supporting his new bride with a deadening job at a newspaper wire service. But when an old investment suddenly makes the family wealthy, their marriage begins to unravel — until a sudden tragedy changes everything.
While traveling in Paris, author Henry Miller and his wife, June, meet Anais Nin, and sexual sparks fly as Nin starts an affair with the openly bisexual June. When June is forced to return to the U.S., she gives Nin her blessing to sleep with her husband. Then, when June returns to France, an unexpected, and sometimes contentious, threesome forms.
An acclaimed novelist struggles to write an analysis of love in one of three stories, each set in a different city, that detail the beginning, middle and end of a relationship.
Almost 19-year-old Marius feels himself in a rut in Marseille, his life planned for him by his cafe'-owning father, and he longs for the sea. The night before he is to leave on a 5-year voyage, Fanny, a girl he grew up with, reveals that she is in love with him, and he discovers that he is in love with her. He must choose between an exciting life at sea, and a boring life with the woman he loves. And Fanny must choose between keeping the man she loves, and letting him live the life he seems to want.
In 19th-century France, doctor's wife Emma Bovary seeks to escape her dull provincial life through various extramarital affairs and extravagant spending, leading to tragic consequences.
In Imperial Russia, Anna, wife of the officer Karenin, goes to Moscow to visit her brother. On the way, she meets charming cavalry officer Vronsky, to whom she's immediately attracted. But in St. Petersburg’s high society, a relationship like this could destroy a woman’s reputation.
Young, wild poet Arthur Rimbaud and his mentor Paul Verlaine engage in a fierce, forbidden romance while feeling the effects of a hellish artistic lifestyle.
When Isabelle and Theo invite Matthew to stay with them, what begins as a casual friendship ripens into a sensual voyage of discovery and desire in which nothing is off limits and everything is possible.
Failed musician Jay abandoned his family and now earns a living as head bartender in a trendy London pub. Every Wednesday afternoon, a woman comes to his house for graphic, almost wordless, sex. One day, Jay follows her and learns about her. This eventually disrupts their relationship.