Valmont

Valmont is a 1989 romantic drama film directed by Miloš Forman and starring Colin Firth, Annette Bening, and Meg Tilly. Based on the 1782 French novel Les Liaisons dangereuses by Choderlos de Laclos, and adapted for the screen by Jean-Claude Carrière, the film is about a scheming widow (Merteuil) who bets her ex-lover (Valmont) that he cannot corrupt a recently married honorable woman (Tourvel). During the process of seducing the married woman, Valmont ends up falling in love with her. Earlier, Merteuil learns her secret lover (Gercourt) has discarded her and is about to marry her cousin's daughter- the virginal 15 year old Cécile. As revenge, the jilted Merteuil employs Valmont (during his pursuit of Tourvel) to seduce Cécile before her marriage to Gercourt. Valmont received an Oscar nomination for Best Costume Design (Theodor Pištěk). It was Fabia Drake's final film role. Plot In 18th century France, the Marquise de Merteuil, a wealthy widow, learns that her secret lover Gercourt will marry Cécile de Volanges, a 15-year-old who was raised in a convent to ensure her chastity. It is rumored that Gercourt cannot easily break off relations with his "former" mistress who is mentally unbalanced. Angered over the hypocrisy of Gercourt's insistence on a virgin bride while keeping a lover of his own, his concealment of the upcoming marriage, and his slight of her character, Merteuil plans revenge. She approaches her former lover, the womanizer Vicomte de Valmont, and proposes that he take Cécile's virginity before her wedding night to humiliate Gercourt. Valmont is not interested in Cécile, as he is pursuing Madame de Tourvel, a married woman. Tourvel, well known for her virtue, had been warned of Valmont's debauchery and deliberately avoids him. Merteuil makes Valmont a wager: if he succeeds in bedding Madame de Tourvel, he may also bed Merteuil; if he fails, he must consign himself to a monastery.