First of all: the 1988 Dangerous Liaisons is one of my top ten favorite movies. It holds up! The performances are uniformly excellent, including a brilliant use of Keanu’s inherent sweet doofiness. I live to muse about whether or not Glenn Close was robbed at the Oscars that year — she lost to Jodie Foster in The Accused and I can’t really argue with that, but it seems wrong that Glenn Close has zero Oscars. (She also lost the year prior to Cher in an arguably tighter race). I ABSOLUTELY think Michelle Pfeiffer was. Geena Davis is of course a delight in general, but The Pfeiffs will murder you emotionally in Dangerous Liaisons, and when was the last time anyone watched the film adaptation of The Accidental Tourist? Indeed. And this has been Film Thoughts Mostly From the Late 80s, which I’m just gonna make into a Public Access TV show. (Do those even exist anymore? Is that just TikTok now?)
ANYWAY. One must also, of course, hat tip Cruel Intentions, when speaking in this space. Dangerous Liaisons has given us so much. And now it’s giving us a new series adaptation on Starz. I would be snarky about whether there is a need for this, except Lesley Manville is in it, and I actually DO have a need for THAT, and contrary to what you might guess from the title, it turns out it is actually a PREQUEL. Which I am actually also kind of into. I’m delighted by the idea of big costume dramas from the 80s becoming an endless source of IP. Please call on me to write the Starz series about what Freddie Honeychurch gets up to when he’s off-screen in A Room With a View.
So, hooray and carry on. I think everyone who attended the premiere was on a group text and agreed to go big and wacky, and I for one appreciate this.
