From Premiere Magazine, Nov 1989:
Valmont promises to introduce Firth to a wider audience. Or does it? Have the film and his role in it been upstaged by Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons? And John Malkovich's vicomte?

"The part I play is no more the John Malkovich role than Hamlet is the Lawrence Olivier role. Besides, when one is doing Hamlet, one is always using the same script. Valmont is altogether different form Frears' film. The characters are motivated differently, the plot concentrates on different story lines, it has a different ending. During the six-month shoot, nobody mentioned or even thought of the other film."

But ......it was John Malkovich's lizardly rum in the same role in Frears' version, Dangerous Liaisons, which caught the public imagination...

In an interview with James Ryan for the Entertainment News Wire, Milos Forman tells how he first conceived his film after watching Christopher Hampton's stage adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Forman was immediately struck by how much the play differed from his memories of the book read as a 19-year-old student: "I went back to the book. The stage presentation was very faithful. It was my memory playing funny games with me."
Forman was already writing his script with Jean-Claude Carriere when it was announced that Stephen Frears would take Hampton's stage adaptation to the screen. "It was clear right away we couldn't come out first because of my pace of working and the scope of what we were trying to do in portraying 18th century markets, towns, etc". he said. The two films differ so much in style and tone that one can almost forget they cover the same dramatic territory". [BPI Entertainment News WireDate: Jan-1990]

But Forman told later on that when Frears film was ready to open, that he feared every day that his team would be forced to stop filmingValmont. But no such words came. In an interview for a Swedish newspaper Forman finds it interesting that the film industry was willing to invest millions of dollars in two adaptions of the same book - at the same time. "A sympathetic madness!" [Göteborgs-Posten 13 April, 1995] Picture courtesy of Anita

Forman about casting: "My approach is whoever is best for the part should get it, regardless. But I admit that when it comes to a period film it sometimes helps the credibility if I don't see faces that I'm so familiar with in contemporary stories."

Annette Bening matches wits with Colin Firth as Valmont, whose amorous attentions are focused on the chaste Madame de Tourvel (Meg Tilly) and the virginal Cecile de Volanges (the 13 years old child actress Fairuza Balk). Forman considered casting bigger name actors, but went with lesser knowns to lend Valmont an aura of authenticity. Although he has tampered with other aspects of the original, he felt it was essential to remain faithful to the ages of the protagonists - all of whom are under 30 in the book. The younger cast lends a naive playfulness to their characters' otherwise reprehensible behavior.

"You don't want to portray these people as monsters. When you expect they are responsible for what they are doing to each other then it is really awful. But when it happens between two people who are trying to find their way in life, it's still awful but less monstrous. It's almost touchingly monstrous."

"We got a few attacks blaming us for not being faithful to the original but I don't accept that" he said. "In letters everybody is reviewing aspects of him or herself. Letters don't say everything. We tried to figure out what happened before the letters were written. It was great fun."

French critics praised the film, focusing on the historical accuracy of his characters, sets and costumes. Thanks to the magic of director of photography Miroslav Ondricek, Valmont's images - many of them shot by candlelight - are warm and compelling. [BPI Entertainment News WireDate: Jan-1990]


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