Dangerous Liaisons

«Dangerous Liaisons» is the only book by Choderlos de Laclos, a French officer-artillerist, inventor, and politician, and in 1782, when this epistolary novel was first published, the author insisted that all the correspondence contained within was completely authentic. We do... not know if this is true, but «Dangerous Liaisons», one of the first psychological novels in history, remains one of the brightest and most popular examples of 18th-century literature, and to this day, it has not lost its relevance. Wishing to take revenge on their opponents and partly on each other, the characters of the novel, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil, devise a sophisticated intrigue. Developing a clever strategy and tactics to seduce the young maiden Cécile de Volanges, they virtuously exploit human weaknesses and flaws. The novel has been adapted numerous times — and invariably brilliantly — by Roger Vadim (1960), Stephen Frears (1988), Miloš Forman (1989), Roger Kumble (1999), Josée Dayan (2003), and others, with major stars such as Gérard Philippe, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Catherine Deneuve, Annette Bening, and John Malkovich, as well as Colin Firth, Uma Thurman, Keanu Reeves, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Reese Witherspoon playing roles in these adaptations: «Dangerous Liaisons» is material that any worthy actor is ready to interpret in their own way, like Shakespearean tragedies. Passion and revenge, purity and vice, frivolity and chastity — these are eternal themes, and for centuries now, we have been watching the twists and turns of this plot, unable to look away.