Cruel Intentions Review
by James Sanford (jamessanford AT earthlink DOT net)March 7th, 1999
On the surface, a teen version of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" sounds like it might be workable. After all, Hollywood managed to transplant Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire" to Los Angeles and sell it as "City of Angels," so why shouldn't writer-director Roger Kumble take a crack at reconstructing Choderlos De Laclos' tale of romantic intrigue in modern-day Manhattan?
"Cruel Intentions" offers 97 minutes worth of good reasons why not. Though glossy in the extreme and occasionally imaginative, the movie never gets past a crucial structural flaw: Behavior that would have scandalized pre-Revolutionary France would scarcely raise an eyebrow among today's drug-dazed and sex-crazed Upper East Side crowd. So right off thebat, "Intentions" is in trouble.
Matters aren't helped by the casting of the colorless Ryan Phillippe as Sebastian, this version's equivalent of Valmont. In "Dangerous Liaisons," director Stephen Frears' acclaimed 1988 film based on De Laclos' novel, John Malkovich's Valmont was the personification of passionless sexuality; when he spoke, it sounded as if there were icicles in between each word. That Phillippe has studied Malkovich's portrayal is clearly evident in his attempts to duplicate that sort of eerie diction, but Phillippe's unfortunate tendency to fall back on poses and pouts flattens his performance.
Sarah Michelle Gellar, obviously drawing on her years of playing the bad seed on "All My Children," vamps through the Merteuil role with a certain amount of style, although the script gives the character very little backstory. Screenwriter Christopher Hampton's "Liaisons" presented Merteuil's devious games as a sort of twisted feminism. Kumble simply sees her as a two-faced tramp.
"Intentions" pairs wealthy reprobates Catherine (Gellar) and Sebastian as stepsiblings who plot the downfalls of graceless Cecile (Selma Blair) and angelic Annette (Reese Witherspoon, who far outclasses her part), an ingenue from Kansas City who trumpets her virginity in interviews the way Brooke Shields used to do. Seduction, drugs and homosexuality figure into the course of events, but, like the virtuous Annette, "Intentions" is all tease and no action. There was more nudity in "Dangerous Liaisons" and you'd find more eroticism in the average "Dawson's Creek" episode.
Perhaps we'd find more exciting material on the cutting room floor, since it appears "Intentions" underwent some kind of last-minute hatchet job; for better or for worse, Joshua Jackson, Christine Baranski and Sean Patrick Thomas barely show up before they disappear, never to be seen again.
James Sanford
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