Cruel Intentions
USA 1999
Reviewed by Edward Lawrenson
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
New York. On a school break, Kathryn Merteuil tries to persuade her stepbrother Sebastian Valmont to deflower Cecile because she is now dating Kathryn's ex-boyfriend Court. Sebastian prefers to pursue the virginal Annette Hargrove. Kathryn bets him he can't sleep with her before school convenes.
Sebastian meets Annette, but she's wary of his libertine reputation. Cecile falls in love with her music teacher Blaine, but the two are parted when Cecile's mother Bunny finds out about the relationship. Sebastian seduces Cecile when he discovers it was Bunny who tipped off Annette about him. But he and Annette are falling in love and eventually have sex. Taunted by Kathryn for falling for Annette, Sebastian breaks up with her but regrets it. Denied access to her, he sends her his journal which details the bet he made with Kathryn and begs for forgiveness. Kathryn falsely tells Blaine, her new lover, that Sebastian beat her up. Infuriated, Blaine attacks Sebastian in the street; Annette, having read the journal, turns up. Sebastian is killed pushing her out of the path of a passing car. At his funeral, Cecile hands out copies of his journal which exposes Kathryn's wicked ways.
Review
"E-mail is for geeks and paedophiles" - so the incorrigible young Lothario Valmont tells us in writer-director Roger Kumble's debut film Cruel Intentions. This typically sharp line allows the movie to retain the narrative logic behind Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses, the 1782 epistolary novel on which it is based. Motivating journeys to drop-off points, acting as incriminatory evidence, letters here have a far more important function than, say, the drippy e-mails exchanged in You've Got Mail.
But there's another reason why Kumble's updating of Laclos' eighteenth-century classic to the world of rich New York teenagers works so well. Familiar from many a teen-pic, the milieu of Cruel Intentions is almost as preoccupied with social standing - with jocks and preppy model students at the top of the pile, geeks at the bottom - as the society Laclos was writing about. The film draws out these parallels without straining for effect. Valmont's opulent apartment is decorated with Louis XIV-style furniture while the dialogue echoes lines from the novel. The young cast display a flair for Kumble's very specific comedy of manners, memorably demonstrated, for instance, by the disgust that flickers on Kathryn's face as Cecile suggests they have a girly "sleepover". Newcomer Selma Blair as Cecile is a particular revelation, changing under Valmont's generous tutelage from gauche schoolkid to sexually experienced young woman.
A clever reworking of a literary classic, Cruel Intentions' brand of intertextuality is closer to Clueless and a bit more upmarket than the knowing references to horror schlock that pepper Kevin Williamson's teen-pics. But despite the air of cynicism exuded by its coolly uncaring characters, it also turns out to be a rather wholesome and morally upright movie, though not quite as trite or dispiritingly bland as Williamson's television series Dawson's Creek.
So while the film contains a few swipes at high-school conformity (gay football star Greg's fear of being outed) there's none of the mischievous anger found in, for example, Heathers. Kathryn may complain about having to behave like "Marsha fucking Brady" but she's such a wilfully unscrupulous character it's difficult to take anything she says at face value. Valmont, meanwhile, ultimately renounces his libertine ways; he dies saving Annette, only to be fondly remembered by her as she drives off in his car in an unusually sentimental montage sequence. Here, Kumble preserves the book's moralistic suggestion that Annette's virtue can redeem even a sinner such as Valmont. Unlike Laclos, who dispatches her counterpart to a convent where she dies, Kumble rewards Annette for her virtue. Speeding off in Valmont's Jaguar, she's sent out into the world, enriched by her experiences.
Credits
- Producer
- Neal H. Moritz
- Screenplay
- Roger Kumble
- Suggested by the novel Les Liaisons dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos
- Director of Photography
- Theo Van de Sande
- Editor
- Jeff Freeman
- Production Designer
- Jon Gary Steele
- Music
- Edward Shearmur
- ©Cruel Productions, LLC
- Production Companies
- Columbia Pictures presents in association with Original Film and Newmarket Capital Group a Neal H. Moritz production
- Executive Producer
- Michael Fottrell
- Co-executive Producers
- William Tyrer
- Bruce Mellon
- Chris J. Ball
- Co-producer
- Heather Zeegen
- Production Co-ordinators
- Catherine S. McComb
- NY Crew:
- Lonnie Kandel
- Production Manager
- NY Crew:
- Diana Schmidt
- Unit Production Manager
- Sara E. White
- Location Managers
- Jacqueline Butryn
- NY Crew:
- Nancy Roth
- Post-production Supervisor
- Jenifer Chatfield
- Assistant Directors
- Sam Hill
- Alicia Valdez
- Melissa Cummins Lorenz
- NY Crew:
- Amanda Slater
- Aida Rodgers
- Script Supervisor
- Karon May
- Casting
- Mary Vernieu
- Anne McCarthy
- Camera Operators
- Robert Gray
- NY Crew:
- George Pattison
- Jamie Silverstein
- Digital Effects
- Light Matters/Pixel Envy
- Special Effects
- Matthew Pope
- Art Director
- David S. Lazan
- Set Decorators
- Tessa Posnansky
- NY Crew:
- Ronnie Von Blomberg
- Scenic Artist
- Sharleen Bright
- Costume Designer
- Denise Wingate
- Costume Supervisors
- NY Crew:
- Deirdra Elizabeth Govan
- Charles C. Crutchfield
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Sandra Collier
- Make-up
- Key:
- Bradley Wilder
- Artist:
- Karen Blynder
- Hairstylists
- Key:
- Dugg Kirkpatrick
- NY Crew:
- Rose Chatterton
- Hairdresser
- Brenda Blatt
- Titles/Opticals
- Pacific Title/Mirage
- Music Editor
- Amanda Goodpaster
- Soundtrack
- "Every You Every Me" by Brian Molko, Stefan Olsdal, Steven Hewitt, Paul Campion, performed by Placebo; "You Blew Me Off" by/performed by Bobby Bare Jr; "Money Hungry" by/performed by Marc Ferrari, Karen McAuley; "Coffee & TV" by Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Steven Alexander, James Rowntree, David Rowntree, performed by Blur; "Symphony No 9 in D Minor, Op 125 "Choral" by Ludwig van Beethoven, performed by Hungarian Philharmonic Orchestra with Budapest Philharmonic Chorus, conducted by Janos Ferencsik; "Lovefool" by Nina Persson, Peter Svensson, performed by The Cardigans; "Ordinary Life" by/performed by Kristen Barry; "Comin up from Behind" by Sherry Fraser, performed by Marcy Playground; "Addictive" by Pauline Taylor, Maxi Jaxx, Rollo Armstrong, Ayalah Bentovim ('Sister Bliss'), performed by Faithless, contains a large sample of "Addicted" by/performed by Pauline Taylor; "Trip on Love" by Tom Kimmel, Liz Vidal, performed by Abra Moore; "Brandenburg Concerto No 4 in G Major" by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by German Bach Soloists, conducted by Helmut Winschermann; "Like the 40's" by Marc Ferrari, Don Great, William Loose, performed by William Loose; "Praise You" by Norman Cook, Camille Yarbrough, performed by Fatboy Slim, features a sample from "Take Yo Praise" by Camille Yarbrough; "Bedroom Dancing" by Matthew Hardwidge, Phelim Byrne, performed by Day One; "Colorblind" by Adam F. Duritz, Charles Gillingham, performed by Counting Crows; "This Love" by Craig Armstrong, Jerry Burns, performed by Craig Armstrong featuring Elizabeth Fraser; "You Could Make a Killing" by/performed by Aimee Mann; "Bittersweet Symphony" by Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Richard Ashcroft, performed by (1) The Verve, (2) The Andrew Oldham Orchestra; "Secretly" by Skin, Len Arran, performed by Skunk Anansie
- Production Mixer
- Kim H. Ornitz
- NY Crew Sound Mixer
- Rosa Howell-Thornhill
- Re-recording Mixers
- Paul Massey
- D.M. Hemphill
- Supervising Sound Editors
- Bob Newlan
- John Morris
- Dialogue Editors
- Michael Benavente
- Allison Fisher
- Stephanie Flack
- Sound Effects Editor
- John Thomas
- ADR
- Mixer:
- Jeff Gomillion
- Editor:
- Susan Dudeck
- Foley
- Editor:
- Hamilton Sterling
- Stunt Co-ordinators
- Peter Bucossi
- Shane Dixon
- Cast
- Sarah Michelle Gellar
- Kathryn Merteuil
- Ryan Phillippe
- Sebastian Valmont
- Reese Witherspoon
- Annette Hargrove
- Selma Blair
- Cecile Caldwell
- Louise Fletcher
- Helen Rosemond
- Joshua Jackson
- Blaine Tuttle
- Eric Mabius
- Greg McConnell
- Sean Patrick Thomas
- Ronald Clifford
- Alaina Reed Hall
- nurse
- Hiep Thi Le
- Mai-Lee
- Deborah Offner
- Mrs Michalak
- Tara Reid
- Marci Greenbaum
- Drew Snyder
- Hargrove, the headmaster
- Herta Ware
- Mrs Sugarman
- Swoosie Kurtz
- Dr Greenbaum
- Christine Baranski
- Bunny Caldwell
- Charlie O'Connell
- Court Reynolds
- Fred Norris
- meter maid
- Ginger Williams
- Clorissa
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Columbia Tristar Films (UK)
- 8,759 feet
- 97 minutes 20 seconds
- Dolby/SDDS
- Colour by
- CFI
- Prints by
- DeLuxe