"Oddly enough, when I made High Fidelity, which I made for Disney, the head of the studio said
"make this like an indie film."
Liaisons, you know, is about me in frocks, so people in Hollywood were nervous about that"

[Stephen Frears, indieWIRE 2002]

Dangerous Liaisons was one of two movies which based themselves on de Laclos' classic : the other dashing for the tape in 1998 was Milos Forman's Valmont. Even with pre-Darcy heart-throb Colin Firth, you will still struggle to see it today, so comprehensively was it shaded out by Frears' sexy, shocking and superbly acted shark of a film.

With hindsight, the planets were in perfect alignment.

Christopher Hampton's translation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses had already become a red-hot West End theatre ticket, due in no small measure to career-moulding leads from Alan Rickman and Lindsay Duncan.

Set in France in the mid 18th century, it depicts the Marquise de Merteuil who needs a favour from her ex-lover, Vicomte de Valmont.

Her ex-husband is planning on marrying a young woman of virtue (Cecile de Volanges) and the Marquise would like Valmont to seduce Cecile before her wedding day.

Meanwhile Valmont has a conquest of his own in mind - Madame de Tourvel, a beautiful, married, and resolutelyGod-fearing woman.

The Marquise doesn't think that Valmont can pull it off and challenges him to provide written proof of a sexual encounter with Madame de Tourvel, in return for a reward : one last night with her…

Despite studio pressure, Frears held out for John Malkovich for the lead in this period-clad rat-trap - recently hot from The Killing Fields but a million miles from that Hollywood crown of scabrous malice.

Making up the infernal trio are Glenn Close and Michelle Pfeiffer. The former creates an indelible portrait of frozen horror, petrified in face-powder and rouge, as her bored machinations go belly-up.

Pfeiffer, on the other hand, seems almost translucently brittle at times :

"I cast Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Liaisons because she is very moving. She is also the most beautiful woman in the world, so I don't know where one begins and the other ends"

How true. Equally beautiful (to himself if no-one else) is an early but effective Keanu Reeves.

But Dangerous Liaisons succeeds because it's consummately cast and Frears gives his players the room to dazzle. It's an approach that seems to extend to all his collaborators, as Christopher Hampton told The Sunday Times Magazine :

"Stephen is a rare director in that he insists I be there, whereas most directors bar the writer from the set. He's very open to suggestions. He's like Brecht, who also asked people around him what they thought. But Stephen knows more about what he wants than he lets on".