MOVIES : French Love Games From the 18th Century

A periwigged, pear-shaped castrato is trilling the “Largo” from Handel’s opera “Xerxes” in the grand salon of the suburban Chateau Maisons Laffittes. The singer, played by Brasilian Paolo Abel do Nasciemento, is rococo in the extreme. So is the vast salon--crystal-and-gilt chandeliers, walls hung with blue-and-gray tapestries--crowded with dozens of extras dressed in the silks and brocades of 18th-Century French aristocracy.

All this elaborate production design, however, is merely the backdrop for what is very much a character film, “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” starring Glenn Close, John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer.

British director Stephen Frears (“My Beautiful Laundrette,” “Prick Up Your Ears,” “Sammy and Rosie”) has gotten the jump in the “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” derby. His “over $10-million” version is based on the Christopher Hampton play that was a Broadway, London and Paris stage success and has been adapted by Hampton for the screen. The play, which opens at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles in October, was based on Choderlos de Laclos’ perennially shocking 1782 novel. It concerned les jeux d’amour --the love games--played with consummate perversity by the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont.

Meanwhile, Milos Forman (“Amadeus”) will soon begin directing a rival film, “Valmont,” which Forman and Jean-Claude Carriere (“The Unbearable Lightness of Being”) have adapted from Laclos’ public domain novel for the French company Renn Prods., (the same firm that made Roman Polanski’s “Tess” and “Jean de Florette” and “Manon of the Spring”). With a rumored $30-million budget, it’s due to start shooting in France next week, starring Meg Tilly, Annette Bening and Colin Firth, barely days after Frears et al wrap their version of “Liaisons.”

Neither the Paris production office of “Valmont” nor the film’s U.S. press rep would discuss the competing projects, out of a desire, said the latter, “to have ‘Valmont’ and ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’ stand on their own as two separate entities.”

A source who has read the scripts for both films reports only that “they’re very, very different.” The Lorimar Telepictures production of “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” is due in theaters in December via Warner Bros.--many months before Forman is likely to have “Valmont” ready.

Familiar Decadence

Why has “Les Liaisons Dangereuses”--a title that most Americans cannot even pronounce--held readers enthralled for two centuries and now captured the fascination of two celebrated directors?

“I mean,” said co-star Swoosie Kurtz, “how do you get the guy in Toledo or Pittsburgh to say, ‘Hey, Mabel, how about tonight we go see this “Lie-aye . . . “-- how do you say it?’ ”

(For the record, it’s pronounced lay lee-a-zon don-jer-rurze .)

Screenwriter Hampton, Kurtz reported, joked that perhaps the film should be retitled “Porky’s V.” Producer Hank Moonjean (“Stealing Home”) came up with “French Letters,” which, in addition to being a nod to the epistolary source material, is also the English euphemism for condoms.

But the reason for the continuing life of “Les Liaisons,” said director Frears, is that it is populated with “very recognizable people.” He referred specifically to the Merteuil and Valmont characters, played by Close and Malkovich, respectively. “People behaving badly is quite familiar.”

“It has this overgrasp of the human condition,” John Malkovich said of the Laclos material. In its depiction of the decadent aristocracy of 18th-Century pre-revolutionary France, “it’s really funny and exceptionally mean, and very tragic and very dark.”

Feminist aspects are also inherent in the material, which portrays women as little more than pawns of powerful men. While Close acknowledges that the politics of the piece were perhaps less of an attraction to her than the Merteuil role, she justified at least some of the characters’ malicious game playing in feminist-societal terms.

“Basically,” she said, “for a woman as brilliant as Merteuil there was nothing to do. It was that noble leisure society which for several generations had on purpose been given nothing to do. She came into society when she was 15, and she says she was condemned by her status to silence and inactivity.”

A Crucial Scene

As the castrato trills, Frears directs his three stars in a crucial scene--the only one in which Close and Pfeiffer appear together in the film.

Formerly lovers, Merteuil and Valmont are currently engineering his seduction of the righteous and religious young matron Madame de Tourvel, played by Pfeiffer. It turns into an insidious--ultimately tragic--triangle, when Valmont violates a cardinal rule of the game: He falls in love with Tourvel.

Merteuil and Tourvel never really meet, and in this scene, Close is supposed to glean Valmont’s unexpected ardor from a look she sees Malkovich exchange with Pfeiffer. Then, but only after Pfeiffer turns away, she’s supposed to catch Malkovich’s eye and smile at him, as if she’d noticed nothing. And then she is to face front and feign interest in the ongoing musicale that has brought them together. Inexorably, her face is supposed to become a finely drawn map of fury, wounded vanity, painful betrayal, panic.

“Oh no!” exclaims Close at the end of the first take. “I turned too quickly and made eye contact with Michelle! We’re going to have to do it again!”

They do the next take quite to Frears’ satisfaction--Close has demonstrated to the camera that Merteuil’s universe is suddenly reeling.

And what a universe it is!

It’s 18th-Century France, where, according to Malkovich, “All this wit and drive and passion and talent and energy devoted to decadence could only have one result: revolution.”

It’s a universe, Close said, “in which women were considered to be objects, manipulated and at the mercy of men.”

It’s a universe, noted Swoosie Kurtz, where “a woman over 30 is likely to be a widow. Glenn’s one, so is Rosemonde (Valmont’s wise old aunt, played by the 80-year-old stage and screen veteran Mildred Natwick), and the one I play is perpetuating the phenomenon by trying to marry her teenage daughter off to an older man.”

Fat chance of that: The man in question wants a virgin, but because he earlier dumped Close, she, in revenge, prevails upon Malkovich to bed the girl.

“It’s a universe,” said 18-year-old Uma Thurman, who plays the deflowered girl, “in which manner is more important than meaning.”

Previous attempts to dramatize Choderlos de Laclos’ book include a modern-dressed 1959 Roger Vadim version with Gerard Philippe and Jeanne Moreau, even an East German stage adaptation, and Hampton’s recent stage version.

Producer Norma Heyman, with backing from Lorimar, acquired the film rights to the Hampton play in April, 1987; she is now co-producing with Hank Moonjean. Hampton, working from the play as well as the novel, fashioned the screenplay for the Frears film.

The dark view of life in the book, play and script is wildly out of sync with the search-for-depth-and-authenticity, take-responsibility-for-yourself thrust of most of the literature on human relations over the past two decades. It’s what you wouldn’t hear on the popular daily emissions of Phil and Oprah and their ilk.

But Malkovich, who himself believes that “by nature people are quite tragic and dark,” may have pinpointed the subversive appeal of “Les Liaisons” when he said: “Who in God’s name wants to be responsible for their actions? It’s a completely anti-human tendency.”

(Interestingly, despite the runaway success of “Liaisons,” his first novel, Choderlos de Laclos never wrote another one, but he subsequently authored a treatise on the education of women. Later still, as an important figure in the French Revolution, he hoped but failed to see the practical application of his theories.)

Like Malkovich, Close saw a tragic dimension in the story. For her it consists in the fact that, whether because of something in themselves or in their society, the relationship between “two people (Valmont and Merteuil) who were probably the loves of each other’s lives . . . got twisted.”

But unlike Malkovich, she felt that rather than lead audiences to somber conclusions about life or love, the material “would probably strengthen somebody’s idea of what love would be.”

(Between takes, Close, who had brought her 6-week-old baby with her to the filming, was the picture of radiant maternal love.)

Pfeiffer felt the story’s lasting appeal might be its “fear-of-loving” theme. “Because that makes you vulnerable, that means giving up control. And my character, as much as John’s or Glenn’s, is very controlled and has that fear.” Her Madame de Tourvel is also caught up in that age-old conflict between duty and pleasure. “Unlike Tourvel,” said Pfeiffer, “I’m not a real religious person. But I try to be moral. And, like Tourvel, I do think my need to try to do what’s right interferes a lot with my ability to . . . just live. “

Close-up Study

Hampton had present-day audiences in mind while writing dialogue for the play and film script, for some comfortable middle ground between 18th-Century speech and contemporary diction.

“In this regard,” Hampton said, “working from the French was somehow liberating. I never, until the actors arrived waving English translations of the book and asking, ‘What about this, what about that?,’ read the book in English.” Had Hampton ever considered updating the material, as Vadim did? “Paradoxically,” he replied, “I don’t think you can bring out the modernity of the story unless you set it in period.”

Also paradoxically, to accommodate modern audiences, the movie is now set further back in the 18th Century than the 1782 of the source material or the eve-of-Revolution 1788 of the first draft of the screenplay.

“The look of the 1780s is gauzier and flossier, but with enormous wigs that, in addition to screaming ‘period!,’ would make it very difficult to shoot two heads in close-up,” said costume designer James Acheson. “Instead, the harder silhouette of 1760”--accomplished by panniers , those hoops that expand the skirt at the side and require a double doorway for a smooth entrance or exit--”and the smaller-headed look that goes with it seemed to serve our purposes better.”

Acheson added that Frears had told him early on “that he didn’t want people coming out humming the embroidery, as they did with ‘The Last Emperor’ “--to which Acheson also contributed costumes. And Stuart Craig, the production designer, said that “though one will certainly see the 18th Century in the sets and they will be quite beautiful, a conscious decision was taken not to enter the (18th-Century opulence) race against ‘Amadeus’ and ‘Barry Lyndon’ and come in second.”

It’s no secret that a large chunk of the relatively modest budget is going to the film’s high-cost American cast.

“To me,” said Frears, “the access to the material is through the characters. ‘Les Liaisons Dangereuses’ is about people dealing with their feelings--or failing to deal with them--and American actors play feelings wonderfully, especially in close-up.”

Frears, one deduces, is shooting rather a lot of close-ups, for aesthetic and practical reasons that, for once, dovetail neatly. Close-ups are, according to the director, “a style that enhances what (the American actors) are about.” At the same time, they also de-emphasize the backgrounds on which not a great deal is being spent.

“Sometimes,” Frears continued, “I think casting is the main contribution I make to a film. If you’ve got the right group, you’re all right.” To handle Christopher Hampton’s not-quite-18th-Century but still ornamental dialogue, the right group had to be theater-trained. Even 23-year-old Keanu Reeves, from “River’s Edge,” who ends up as Malkovich’s rival for Close, has essayed a Mercutio. (Indeed, Frears admitted that this was the most difficult role to cast because so few of the name American actors of the proper age have the requisite training.)

The one conspicuous non-theater trained member of the cast is Michelle Pfeiffer, a self-described “Valley Girl” (actually she is from Orange County, which she laughingly insists is “the same thing”). But Pfeiffer, currently in “Married to the Mob,” had played an 18th-Century woman in the film-within-a-film in Alan Alda’s “Sweet Liberty,” and she said that her study of the movement and diction of the period for that part made this one considerably less foreboding.

Frears sidestepped the inevitable question about whether he has found, as his countrymen often do, that American actors are more needy--requiring more discussion, a greater sense of participation, or just more coddling--than their English counterparts. But John Malkovich thought that working with Americans on “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” has been both “different” and “difficult” for Frears because, among other things, “American actors are much more disciplined.

Malkovich explained the seeming heresy: “It takes a great deal of discipline, when you’re doing something and you know it’s not right and time’s running out and the crew has been there 15 hours and you’re exhausted, to say, ‘You know, we’ve got to redo this. I stopped at that motel and I didn’t approve of the rooms.’ ”

(Meaning, they tried it that way, and it didn’t work.)

“Whereas, in all fairness to the English actor, he might be more prone to say, ‘Right, well, he’s the governor and this is sort of how we do it.’ ” Malkovich added: “It’s been difficult for us (too).”

For the American actors, the difficulty seems to consist of not always being able to read Frears. The chunky, dark-haired, 46-year-old director is given to pulling contemplatively at his jaw while trying to formulate and express his ideas. Despite the fast answer the visiting journalist heard Frears give Pfeiffer about a costuming question, the actress, who affectionately calls the director “crabby apple,” said it has sometimes taken 20 minutes to determine that “what he really means is, ‘Just do it better.’ ” As well, one must determine when he’s being serious and when funny.

“It takes a while to ‘Frear up’--to plug into his extremely dry sense of humor,” Kurtz said. “But when he’s being straightforward, he’s incredibly honest. When I had reservations about taking this part--it seemed insubstantial on the page, I refused it twice--he didn’t tell me, ‘There’s a wonderfully vibrant, vivid character there that we’re going to expand.’ He said, ‘I absolutely agree with you.’ ” Kurtz added that it was John Guare, author of her stage success, “The House of Blue Leaves,” who told her, “I think you’re being a jerk to refuse the part!” and advanced suggestions as to how to interpret it--suggestions that Frears embraced.

‘It’s So French but . . .’

Apart, though maybe not entirely separate from, all these issues, the question has been raised locally as to whether Frears and his cast are the right people to interpret “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.” Malkovich reported that a French journalist friend said, in essence, “How could you do it? You’re not right for it. Stephen’s not right for it; it’s so French.”

Malkovich said that he replied, “You’re really insulting your country very, very grievously because you assume that what is arguably if not the finest piece of French literature, something that is certainly in the Top 10, could only be understood by a pack of people who call themselves French--and that’s just patent nonsense.”

Stephen Frears has, in “My Beautiful Laundrette,” “Prick Up Your Ears” and “Sammy and Rosie,” probably dealt more tellingly with love games and dangerous relations than anyone currently practicing his trade. And “Les Liaisons Dangereuses,” he said, “is the same combination of romance and cynicism, really.”

The cynicism, Frears said, is not his own, but that of the contemporary world. He joked that English Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher “would be very, very good as the Marquise.”

In a way, the offhand reference to the present-day political scene seems entirely consistent with Frears’ hopes for “Les Liaisons Dangereuses.”

“I hope it’s not a work of art, the film,” he said, sounding horrified at that prospect.

What then does he want it to be?

Seeming surprised at the query, he replied, “I hope it’s a work of life.”