Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Christopher Hampton's stage adaptation of Choderlos de Laclos' novel Le Liaisons Dangereuses was fist published in 1985, just two centuries after the novel itself in 1782.Hampton chillingly captures the mannered sexual cynicism of the French Aristocracy in the years immediately prior to the French Revolution, when the bloody head of social unrest burst through the fabric of elite excess.
In the 18th Century, the novel scandalised society with its portrayal of cruelty, betrayal, passion and revenge in the battle between love and virtue and with its prophetic vision of the protest of the people against the values of the aristocracy where decadence had become an end in itself.
This tale has lost none of its impact with the passing ceturies.It continues to scandalise both puritan and libertine alike; puritan because it reveals with alarming humour and charm a picture of utter wickedness, and libertine because it reveals too much to others of thier methods.

Immortalised superbly in Film format by John Malkovich, Glen Close, Uma Thurman, Keanu Reeves & Michelle Pfieffer; it was nominated for various Academy awards, and while the ending has suffered the hand of the Hollywood Moralist, it is still worth a look.

However prudent we may be in this affair,
there is always the possibility of scandal....