Dangerous Liaisons

Director: Stephen Frears

1988 / 119min / DCP

Pfeiffer shines in the role of the devout Madame Marie de Tourval, subject of a wicked wager between fellow pre-Revolutionary French aristocrats Glenn Close and John Malkovich, who has been tasked with seducing this unsuspecting prey. A crackling adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos’s novel, with a crisp, cutting screenplay courtesy Christopher Hampton, delivered by the dead game cast, which includes up-and-comers Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves. “A first-rate piece of work by a director who’s daring and agile… It’s heaven, alive in a way that movies rarely are.”—Pauline Kael, The New Yorker