Film

Dangerous Liaisons

Name: Dangerous Liaisons
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 1988
Cast: Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Michelle Pfeiffer, Uma Thurman, Swoosie Kurtz

A story about seduction as sport, played by aristocrats with nothing better to do and no one they won't ruin for amusement. Malkovich and Close are magnificently cruel, trading barbed letters and staged conquests while Pfeiffer's Madame de Tourvel becomes the one real casualty of their game. Gorgeous, cold, and quietly devastating — ideal for anyone who likes their period romance laced with contempt.

TMDb rating

7.2

If you liked this

The Favourite2018

Two women wage a vicious, hilarious war for a queen's affection and the power that comes with it, using flattery, sex, and outright sabotage as weapons. Same appetite for cruelty dressed as courtship, just funnier and filthier.

But The anachronistic dialogue and modern camera tricks might jar if you want your costume drama played straight.

Atonement2007

A single act of manipulation among the English upper classes detonates across decades, wrecking lives with the same patient, devastating inevitability as Valmont's letters. Gorgeous, tragic, and just as merciless about what desire and pride can do.

But It's a full-on tearjerker with a structural twist that some find more clever than earned.

The Age of Innocence1993

Scorsese turns his gangster instincts on Gilded Age New York, where a glance across a drawing room can ruin a life as surely as a bullet. Same suffocating world of manners hiding real cruelty and real longing.

But It's slower and more interior than you'd expect from Scorsese — restraint is the whole point, which won't suit everyone.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Rules of the Game1939

Both films anatomize an idle, entitled class that treats love as sport and cruelty as manners — Renoir just got there half a century earlier, and used comedy instead of tragedy to make the same damning point.

Renoir's masterpiece watches aristocrats and their servants juggle lovers at a country house, exposing a whole class amusing itself right up to catastrophe. Funnier, sadder, and startlingly modern for something shot on the eve of war.

But It's a 1939 black-and-white French film with a large ensemble and a farcical structure — a real leap for viewers who want lush period romance.

Barry Lyndon1975

Kubrick's cold, candlelit chronicle of a social climber who marries and manipulates his way up the ladder shares the same icy detachment about ambition, class, and how quickly charm curdles into cruelty.

But Three hours long and deliberately glacial in pace — gorgeous, but a real commitment for casual viewing.

Cruel Intentions1999

The exact same plot in American high school drag — the bet, the seduction, the betrayal — played as pure trashy, quotable fun. Watching it after this one is like seeing the joke land twice.

But It's deliberately campy and shallow where the original is elegant — a downgrade in craft, an upgrade in fun.

A Room with a View1986

Merchant Ivory's warm, sunlit take on repression and class in another century, where propriety keeps threatening to strangle real feeling. A gentler companion piece — same manners, same stakes, kinder outcome.

But Sweet where the other is savage — if you wanted more venom, this will feel too soft.

Chéri2009no page yet

Pfeiffer again, this time as an aging courtesan entangled with a much younger man — a mirror-image study of desire, vanity, and the cruelty of getting older in a world built on appearances.

But Less biting and more melancholy — a quieter, sadder film than the manipulative games you just watched.

Valmont1989no page yet

Milos Forman's own take on the same novel, released the same year, with Colin Firth as Valmont and a lighter, more romantic touch. Fascinating to watch as a direct answer to the version you just saw.

But It lost the box-office battle for a reason — softer and less memorable than the film it was racing against.

The Duchess2008no page yet

Keira Knightley as a real 18th-century aristocrat trapped in a marriage of cold calculation and public humiliation — history proving the games in this film weren't just fiction.

But More conventional biopic than sly comedy of manners — earnest where the other is wickedly playful.

Untold Scandal2003no page yet

It's a direct descendant — an adaptation of the same 18th-century novel, moved to a completely different culture and moral code, proving the machinery of seduction and social ruin translates almost perfectly across continents and centuries.

The same novel transplanted to the Joseon Dynasty, where the seducer's game plays out under even stricter codes of honor and shame. Lush, mournful, and a genuinely fresh angle on a story you already know.

But It's a subtitled Korean costume drama, and its ending swaps European cynicism for a more melodramatic, tragic Korean sensibility.

Closer2004

Same architecture underneath: people treating desire as a strategy game, confessing and lying in turn to gain or keep the upper hand. Nichols just strips away the 18th-century armor of manners and lets the cruelty happen in plain modern speech.

Strip away the corsets and candlelight and you get this: four people in modern London using honesty itself as a weapon, wounding each other with confessions instead of letters. Just as cruel, twice as bare.

But No costumes, no distance to soften it — the cruelty here is contemporary and close enough to sting.