Milo Forman's Valmont is the weakest version so far, suffering from willfully wrongheaded casting, a comic-strip "free" adaptation by former Luis Bunuel collaborator Jean-Claude Carriere, and Forman's heavy-handed direction of material that requires the most sophisticated glancing touch.
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What are critics saying?
Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt
Livelier, more absorbing, and generally better acted than "Dangerous Liaisons," which arrived a year ago. But it runs out of inspiration long before it runs out of plot twists, and we've seen the twists too many times before.
The New York Times by Janet Maslin
For every necessary touch that Valmont has reduced or dispensed with (the climactic duel scene, for instance), there is another, less vital moment that has been expanded.
Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum
The results are too pretty and well acted to be a total washout, but the fascination with evil and power that gives the novel intensity is virtually absent; what remains is mainly petty malice and mild cynicism.
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) by Liam Lacey
Forman's treatment is another matter entirely - infinitely more subtle and, using the intrinsic bias of film, far more naturalistic. [18 Nov 1989]
Rolling Stone by Peter Travers
The film is rapturously beautiful, enticing us into a lush, aristocratic world.
Valmont arrives stiffened by the elegant, inert formalism of Forman's direction, and chilled by Carriere's all too sober respect for his source and by their mutual determination to apply modern psychological understanding to the behavior of the principal figures.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
The Frears version is cerebral and claustrophobic, an exercise in sexual mindplay.