Colin Firth and Meg Tilly in Valmont
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 "If you're not convinced that he can persuade this woman that she's changed him, if that doesn't work, the audience will laugh." Colin Firth, in 1989 |
| photograph from UK Elle, May 1997 |
excerpts from a 1989 interview, by John Hartl
"Milos' version is going to be incredibly different," said the 28-year-old Firth ... this week. "The characters have the same names, the story is still about sexual manipulation, but that leaves room for a lot of differences.
"Our emphasis is not on overtly decadent behavior. Valmont has more to do with what it is that works when you manipulate someone. There are hearts beating inside these characters, and you should leave the theater with questions about Valmont's true feelings. If you're not convinced that he can persuade this woman that she's changed him, if that doesn't work, the audience will laugh." |
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Excerpts from a 1990 review in the Detroit Free Press
By: Jay Carr Milos Forman's Valmont ... is far and away the better -- and better-acted -- of the two most recent movie versions of Choderlos de Laclos' "Les Liaisons Dangereuses."
Too bad Forman's version came second. It's the only one to convincingly inhabit its pre-French Revolution milieu, make its characters interesting and appealing, and animate them with a subtler and more comprehensible range of feelings. You not only understand why Colin Firth's Valmont and Annette Bening's Mme. de Merteuil are seductive, you're quite willingly seduced by them. In the other film, we're told of their irresistibility and sexual prowess but have to take it on faith.
Yet it's Bening's charmingly devious Merteuil who rightly dominates the film, just as she dominates Valmont, who's clearly no match for her, and who pays dearly for letting himself think he is.
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Click the video box for enlargements of photos from the video box |
Valmont was shown at the 35th London Film Festival (1991). Excerpts from a Review by Alan Jay. 
This film gives a new light a feel to the version that many of us have already seen. Beautifully shot in widescreen this is an excellent entertaining adaption of the book.
This film has taken nearly three years to reach the UK as it was made around the same time as the Stephen Frears version with Glen Close and John Malcovitch [sic]. This version does not take the Christopher Hampton play as its starting point but goes back to the original book. ... No longer do we see nasty evil people doing unpleasant things to each other but we see characters who show a veneer of harmless normality while they scheme.
The film looks stunningly beautiful throughout and the performances are
excellent. ... The manipulation is still there but it is less blatant to the players while the audience gets the overview of the game and can see how things start to go wrong. Colin Firth and Annette Benning's performances are excellent. Colin Firth who was at the screening said how interesting it was to play, as Milos Forman insisted that the character be very naturalistic and not give any impression of his nature through his behaviour or speech. |
From a 1997 interview with Greg Stevens:
But Firth says that even when he came to play Valmont he refused to fall back on his looks: "I don't think I'm a steamy sexpot sort of bloke, I don't have the eyebrows. For me, the idea of Valmont the seducer was the claw in the velvet glove, it was about duplicity and cunning, which was Forman's intention. I think he was genuinely shattered by the failure of that film; it was almost like a tragic experience for him from which he's never recovered. I think that he was really too subtle for his own good." |
