DigDog
Lifer
- Jun 3, 2011
- 13,782
- 2,284
- 126
i watched a long, long 2-hour Dangerous Liasons - https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094947/reference/
which back in 1988 won a shitload of stuffy, pompous awards, but today is just barely watchable.
Glenn Close and John Malkovich are two exceedingly evil people who, for little or no reason, like to fuck with other people's lives, though they have nothing to gain from this - sport, mostly.
John is willing to go along with this scheme for more or less the same non-reasons. It involves bonking a number of naive young girls, from the 17yo Uma Thurman, to the 30yo Michelle Pfeiffer. The dialogue is extremely roundabout, and delivered with a fervor that make me doubt if these people are human at all. In fact, i find it hard to relate to any of the protagonists, mostly because they are a caricature of "devilish will" in their intentions. Malkovich / Casanova / Valmont doesn't even do it for the pleasure of sex, he just does it because "i'm a piece of shit and this is what i do".
The film is terribly slow. There is never any sense of urgency, a mission that our protagonist must accomplish; the backstories of the characters are doled out with a dropper, and there is some thin sense that "revenge" is driving them, although not revenge against someone specific, but rather revenge as its own thing, "the world is evil and so i will be the evilest of them all" kind of nonsense.
The real draw of the film was that, by 1980s standards, this was a highly-erotically-charged film. If you were a typical, pudic filmgoer in 1988 and found this film titillating, you would have had a lot of non-erotic material to defend the film, while secretly just wanting to get your rocks off. Today, the same doesn't work anymore, and i'm just watching Glenn Close being a complete failure of a human being.
And the acting is the servant of the story. Nothing wrong with Close, or Malkovich, but a story that goes nowhere masquerading as a work of art.
Bonus, Uma Thurman, for being a twig, had a set of jugs on her. Michelle Pfeiffer is less interesting. Peter Capaldi plays a few lines as a valet, and none other than Jesus Keanu plays the role of the idiot, once again.
Throughout, due to the setting, i couldn't help thinking i would rather be watching Amadeus.
My vote: 6/10 - but not a film i would recommend in any way.
which back in 1988 won a shitload of stuffy, pompous awards, but today is just barely watchable.
Glenn Close and John Malkovich are two exceedingly evil people who, for little or no reason, like to fuck with other people's lives, though they have nothing to gain from this - sport, mostly.
John is willing to go along with this scheme for more or less the same non-reasons. It involves bonking a number of naive young girls, from the 17yo Uma Thurman, to the 30yo Michelle Pfeiffer. The dialogue is extremely roundabout, and delivered with a fervor that make me doubt if these people are human at all. In fact, i find it hard to relate to any of the protagonists, mostly because they are a caricature of "devilish will" in their intentions. Malkovich / Casanova / Valmont doesn't even do it for the pleasure of sex, he just does it because "i'm a piece of shit and this is what i do".
The film is terribly slow. There is never any sense of urgency, a mission that our protagonist must accomplish; the backstories of the characters are doled out with a dropper, and there is some thin sense that "revenge" is driving them, although not revenge against someone specific, but rather revenge as its own thing, "the world is evil and so i will be the evilest of them all" kind of nonsense.
The real draw of the film was that, by 1980s standards, this was a highly-erotically-charged film. If you were a typical, pudic filmgoer in 1988 and found this film titillating, you would have had a lot of non-erotic material to defend the film, while secretly just wanting to get your rocks off. Today, the same doesn't work anymore, and i'm just watching Glenn Close being a complete failure of a human being.
And the acting is the servant of the story. Nothing wrong with Close, or Malkovich, but a story that goes nowhere masquerading as a work of art.
Bonus, Uma Thurman, for being a twig, had a set of jugs on her. Michelle Pfeiffer is less interesting. Peter Capaldi plays a few lines as a valet, and none other than Jesus Keanu plays the role of the idiot, once again.
Throughout, due to the setting, i couldn't help thinking i would rather be watching Amadeus.
My vote: 6/10 - but not a film i would recommend in any way.
