I haven’t seen this cheerfully trashy teen spin on Dangerous Liaisons since its original release, and it made for a very entertaining and nostalgic rewatch.
Once upon a time in Hollywood, there was a hot trend of re-imagining a classic play or novel as a modern teen movie, Clueless, Romeo + Juliet, 10 Things I Hate About You to name a few. Cruel Intentions may not be anywhere as good as these, but it has a campy charm of its own, not to mention the amazing soundtrack that pushes all the right buttons for a 90s kid. I smiled fondly throughout, from the moment Placebo’s Every You Every Me kicked in the opening sequence, to the strings of Bitter Sweet Symphony soaring over the melodramatic finale.
The jaded French aristocrats of Les Liaisons dangereuses, the original 18-century novel, are transformed here into the jaded Manhattan rich kids. Cherub-faced Sebastian (Ryan Phillippe, where are you now), a conniving playboy, has grown bored with his easy conquests. His equally unprincipled stepsister Kathryn (Sarah Michelle Gellar) wants him to ruin the reputation of sweet Cecile (Selma Blair), in order to exact revenge on her ex who had the nerve to dump her. But Sebastian sets his sights on a greater challenge, newcomer Annette (Reese Witherspoon), a poster girl for virginity after penning a Why I Plan to Wait article for a teen magazine.
Kathryn proposes a bet: if Sebastian doesn’t succeed, she gets his fancy sports car. If he does deflower Annette, Sebastian gets to sleep with his stepsister (technically not incest, but still icky). Manipulation, blackmail, betrayal and revenge ensue, though not a whole lot of actual sex despite lots of talk about it.
Cruel Intentions came out at a time when I went to the movies indiscriminately and was up for pretty much anything, but even though I was its prime audience, I didn’t think it was good in a conventional sense. Time and nostalgia hasn’t changed my view. The movie can’t quite shake off the try-hard feeling of high school students performing an adult play, with the overly literate, arch dialogue sounding unnatural coming from twenty-somethings playing teenagers. Sebastian’s transformation from a cynical seducer into being genuinely in love is entirely unconvincing; it doesn’t help that Ryan Phillippe never did anything for me either as an actor or a teen idol and fails to sell the emotional scenes.
However, if you set aside its more earnest and syrupy side, the movie is heaps of silly, devious fun, a good bad movie if you like. It is also a pure 90s time capsule, featuring dirty blond Joshua Jackson as a stereotypical gay friend, things played for laughs that would never ever fly today, an oh-so-risqué girl-on-girl kiss, and Sebastian proclaiming airily that “email is for geeks and paedophiles”. Though filmed without any particular style or flair, there’s still a lot to be enjoyed about the luxurious trappings of the uber-rich.
Performance-wise, the movie belongs to Sarah Michelle Gellar, who understands the assignment perfectly and rips into the role of amoral Kathryn with campy gusto. I feel like I never gave her enough credit, even as a one-time Buffy the Vampire Slayer obsessive. Gellar has fantastic chemistry with every other character in the movie, and even bland Phillippe sizzles when he shares screen with her during Sebastian and Kathryn’s charged exchanges. There’s an echo of Glenn Close’s Marquise de Merteuil in Kathryn’s angry rant about the sexual double standards society places on women. It doesn’t make her any more sympathetic, but she has a point.
Though no one will ever call Annette one of Reese Witherspoon’s defining roles, she brings enough of her natural sharp intelligence to elevate a character bound to get lost among the more over-the-top players. I still can’t decide if Selma Blair’s turn as Cecile is comedy gold or just bizarre and awkward; at times it takes Cecile beyond naive and into not quite all there in the head. At the very least, it’s memorable.
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