An epistolary novel chronicles the cruel seduction of a young girl by two ruthless, eighteenth-century aristocrats

Dangerous Liaisons is a 1988 American period romantic drama film directed by Stephen Frears from a screenplay by Christopher Hampton, based on his play Les liaisons dangereuses, which was itself adapted from the 18th-century French novel of the same name by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. It stars Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Michelle Pfeiffer, Swoosie Kurtz, Mildred Natwick, Peter Capaldi, Keanu Reeves and Uma Thurman. Dangerous Liaisons was released theatrically on December 16, 1988, by Warner Bros. It received generally positive reviews from critics with praise for Close and 's and Pfeiffer and 's performances and the screenplay, production values and costumes. Although it was a moderate commercial success grossing $34.7 million against its $14 million budget, it was cited as a box office disappointment. The film received seven nominations at the 61st Academy Awards, including for Best Picture and won three: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Costume Design, and Best Production Design.

The scandalous reputation of Laclos's novel, first published in 1782, is based on its chilling portrayal of the mannered decadence and sexual cynicism of the French aristocracy in the last years of the ancien regime. Christopher Hampton has made a masterful adaptation for the stage of the conspiracy to corrupt a young girl barely out of her convent. Les liaisons dangereuses was premiered by Royal Shakespeare Company at The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 24 September 1985, and won Christopher Hampton the Evening Standard Award for Best Play and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play in 1986 .

The acclaimed historian “creatively use[s] the real-life murder of Count Joseph Visconti . . . to examine 18th-century European life and politics” (Library Journal). In Liaisons Dangereuses, Mary Lindemann examines the mysterious circumstances surrounding the murder of a counterfeit Milanese count, Joseph Visconti, at the hands of a Prussian nobleman, the Baron von Kesslitz. Lindmann vividly reconstructs the drama from the perspectives of the count, the baron, the Spanish consul in Hamburg Antoine Ventura de Sanpelayo, and a courtesan named Anna Maria Romellini. Lindemann explores the historical currents that swept these individuals together and the effects of their fateful encounter on Hamburg’s public, its government, and its diplomatic standing across Europe. Each person involved in the crime is profiled in detail, showing how their individual lives fit into the larger picture of eighteenth-century society. What actually took place on that fateful night in October 1775? All Hamburg buzzed with rumors, but no definitive conclusion was reached. Nevertheless, the case that developed around the killing of Visconti provides fascinating insights into the diplomatic, cultural, legal, social, and political dynamics of late eighteenth century Europe.

Publisher Description

For the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont seduction is a game - the former lovers relish manipulating others to bring amusement to their jaded existences. While Valmont is determined to succeed in his conquest of a virtuous married woman, Merteuil challenges him to seduce an innocent convent girl who it to be married to her former lover. As their intrigues become increasingly duplicitous and they find their human pawns responding in ways they could not have predicted, the consequences prove to be more serious, and deadly, than the two conspirators could have guessed. Depicting decadence and moral corruption in pre-revolutionary France, Dangerous Liaisons (1782) is one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature.