Reader's Choice: Cruel Intentions (1999)
Wednesday, March 23, 2016 at 9:40PM 
Wednesday nights are now devoted to you. We'll alternate between a Q&A and a Reader's Choice Movie. So you are essentially picking the topics each week. We started with Gattaca but y'all kept asking for Cruel Intentions so here we are again.
Believe it or not, I've never seen Cruel Intentions (1999) so I gladly accept the multiple requests to discuss. This is written and directed by someone named Roger Kumble and the name did not ring a bell. It turns out he's still working, mostly on television and he's working on a TV sequel to this very movie. I missed this news somehow but Sarah Michelle Gellar is reprising her role so this post is more timely than I meant it to be.
The credits also inform us that it's only "suggested by" Dangerous Liaisons. That's a fancy word for adapted if you want to compete in Original Screenplay at the Oscars. (Not that this teen picture had any such designs.) I'm not sure if you know this but Dangerous Liaisons (1988) is one of my all time favorite movies. And Swoosie Kurtz is in that one, too! We begin with her as Sebastian Valmont's (Ryan Phillipe) therapist. Her broad gestures and funny notes remind us that this is a comedy. Of sorts.
Swoosie, an unlikely victim in both Dangerous Liaisons movie
In both movies Swoosie is the mother of someone who couldn't have possibly come from her womb: Uma Thurman in the 1988 movie and Tara Reid in this movie -- so, downgrade. Tara must have been left on the editing room floor because this photo is all we see of her.
His therapist is immune to young Sebastian's charms but she learns as he's leaving that her daughter wasn't. She screams at her nasty patient as he leaves the building and he flashes her this baby devil grin. [More...]
Ryan Phillipe probably hasn't played enough bad guys
He will corrupt your daughters.
Not your sons! Please to note: there are 5 gay slurs within the first half hour alone from the pouty lips of both our horny protagonists, Sebastian Valmont and his stepsister Kathryn Merteuil (Sarah Michelle Gellar). One of them is followed by "no offense" which makes it okay [/sarcasm]. This reminds us that 1999 was a long long time ago; turns out it's actually kind of shocking to hear "fag" and "queer" and "lesbian" bandied about as insults in a movie now in 2016. I'd forgotten it used to be common. And while we're on the topic, it's kind of a detriment to a modern adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons that they don't play more with sexual fluidity if you ask me... Valmont should be a wrecking ball for everyone -- like a Terence Stamp in Teorema polysexual atom bomb -- but at least there's a girl-on-girl kiss coming up somewhere for the straight boys (and gay boys who like that sort of thing *raises hand*). It's quite famous which is how I know without having seen this.
Anyway the step-siblings Sebastian and Kathryn (Sarah & Ryan in the Close & Malkovich roles) make their wager about whether Sebastian can seduce the saintly Annette (Reese Witherspoon in the Pfeiffer role) and Kathryn tells him that if he wins:
You can put it anywhere you want."
Which is surely not the first or the last time Ryan Phillipe heard this. Regardless, Ryan had JUST finished putting it anywhere he wanted in the disco drama 54 (1998) though half the places he put it were edited out of the picture. (The director's cut of 54 that's been going around these past couple of years is SO much better, FYI. It's still not a great movie but it is an exceedingly more interesting and cohesive one).
All the scenes with Sarah Michelle Gellar are like that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where Buffy's body was possessed by Faith's spirit. Or that series she did where she had an evil twin? Kathryn is a very bad girl. She even uses her cross as a cocaine dispenser which is surely something Giles would not approve of.
Here's the girl on girl kiss. It's cropped way too tight, like foreheads are a boner killer for Roger Kumble.
What REALLY sells the scene though is this beat right after when Kathryn's job is done and she snaps back to all business like she was on the clock and her job is to f*** with people's hormones. Agenda accomplished. Meanwhile Cecile (Selma Blair in the Uma role) is still caught up in the fever. Funny.
What I'm getting from the movie is that all three people who seduce Cecile caused her to become that nymphomaniac with giant boobs in A Dirty Shame (2004).
(John Waters hasn't made a movie since and that is so sad.)
Here comes more non-hetero stuff. It's courtesy of 'Blaine The Fag' (no offense) who is played by Joshua Jackson. He claims that the football star Greg's (Eric Mabius) mouth is like a hoover. We know Greg IS a 'mo because he even gets a random cutaway at one point where he's sorting CDs and opts to keep "Judy Judy Judy!".
SUBTLE
He's obviously smarter than Sebastian and Blaine think he is because that CD is da best. Can I get an amen?
I should have seen Cruel Intentions when I was much younger in the 90s because now I feel too old to be watching it. Like I want to card these kids when they're drinking or wash all their mouths out with soap for being so crude and talking about f***ing and cumming and blow jobs and whatnot.
Basically it's like Kathryn says
Everyone does it but no one talks about it.
And let's keep it that way! Do we have to talk about it?
I am Cecile/Annette in these scenarios with a side of Greg I guess. \_(ツ)_/¯ We can't help which role we're born to play. Still Mertueil is the star role in any iteration of Dangerous Liaisons and SMG is fun throughout.
The plot is not "suggested" by Dangerous Liaisons but exactly Dangerous Liaisons complete with the bet, the secondary sex training to a naive couple, hidden love letters (in one hilariously dated bit Sebastian says "e-mail is for geeks and pedophiles" were people really still scared of the internet and e-mail in 1999?), blackmail and revenge plots, easily manipulated fussy parents (Christine Baranski - yay!) and Valmont and Merteuil turning on each other even though they really do want to "f*** each other's brains out"
They don't. The closest they get is this unusual lap dance. Lap dances are usually done with asses on laps (or so I've heard) but SMG's all like 'That's boring. I'll use my shoulder blades. Get it!'
Also Sebastian/Ryan shows his ass. Sebastian does it to seduce Anette. But Ryan does it because it was in his contract in the 1990s. Ryan looking at scripts / "I don't get to show my ass in this one? HARD PASS!" 
That ass was everywhere for a few years. Including all up in Reese Witherspoon's business. One strange thing to know while watching this movie is that Reese and Ryan met just before this movie at her 21st birthday party then made this movie. They were married and having babies just a few months after it premiered. This story has always been memorable as celebrity couplings go because they were super young. Most superstar actresses in their early 20s, as Reese was in her Legally Blonde days, aren't carting around two toddlers and a husband but Reese was!
Because this is Dangerous Liaisons and Reese is the Pfeiffer to his Malkovich (they also had an affair during their shoot!) he will seduce her and break her heart even though she's a super good person. In the movie I mean. But he will also fall in love with her and regret all his awfulness. But too late to enjoy happiness.
Reese makes silly faces at Ryan in a very strange scene.This is kind of when he falls for her. SHE'S REAL.
But Cruel Intentions REALLY doesn't stick its landing. The last half hour in particular is a complete and utter mess.
Annette's decision to sleep with Valmont is weirdly quick and absent the fragile dichotomous pious/eroticism that Pfeiffer brought. This is not a knock on Reese's acting. It's just her screen persona. Reese is too sturdy a presence to be easily duped. Fragility and indecision are not things she exudes. So the arc of the relationship plays oddly. And later when he runs to meet her at Penn Station, he finds her just like that AS IF YOU COULD FIND ANYONE IN PENN STATION BEFORE CEL PHONES. And then, when Merteuil loses Valmont by winning their battle it doesn't come with the necessary heartbreak. Say what you will about Close and Malkovich's huge performances (some people feel they're too broad & modern) in the 1988 film but underneath all their shade and sexual boasting you did get the very very firm sense that they actually loved each other at one point and were a perfect sexual match but sex was too much of a game for them to play it with each other.
Cruel Intentions may have a "young supple" body as Merteuil brags but it really does not stick the landing. If this were a gymnastics routine, it'd be the uneven bars (so much of the shot and editing choices feel random) with the pelvis leading the whole body. The last 10 minutes are a disaster. Merteuil is slut shamed by her entire student body AT A FUNERAL OF ALL PLACES. And the last time we see Annette she's shot the exact same way as Valmont was introduced during the opening credits, driving a convertible with dark sunglasses on, her hair whipping around. This is obviously intentional but is it suggesting that she's now the female version of Valmont (????). That makes no sense whatsoever, on any level, especially because Merteuil is the female version of Valmont within the text and everyone who has experienced Dangerous Liaisons in any form will know this since it's not subtext but actual text. This movie lands on its ass instead of her feet. But the routine did have its moments.
previous reader request: Gattaca (1997)
Reader Comments (26)
Ryan Philippe is so hot.
Didn't expect you'd dislike it. You like teen movies (of course not all of them) but this felt right up your alley. You never mention the soundtrack. You never mention the black guy. And Tara's face is shown briefly in a closeup on the phone.
Did you even bother to listen to the ending credit song Secretly?
Sarah Michelle Geller seems to realize this would a departure from her Buffy persona and just ran with it. She is the right level of serious and camp this movie needs.
The best thing about this movie is Dat Azz. Beyond that, give me the Bening or Jeanne Moreau Merteuils.
I don't remember anything redeeming about this (apart, of course, from that ass), but looking back, maybe it was the gay slurs more than anything that kept me from enjoying its campiness. But it's also aiming for camp, which makes it that much harder to actually get there entertainingly.
Half of the movie fun is on SMG performance. Her second worthy performance on a movie was on another comic sexual role with good one-liners on Southland Tales.
"You can put it anywhere."
"I hate it when things don't go my way. It makes me so....horny."
"God forbid, I exude confidence and enjoy sex. Do you think I relish the fact that I have to act like Mary Sunshine 24/7 so I can be considered a lady? I'm the Marcia *fucking* Brady of the Upper East Side and sometimes I want to kill myself."
I can actually quote these without even looking it up.
I *deeply* love this movie and Kathryn/Sarah. She was just pure delightful untamed evil. If I could read any book in from a fictional medium, it would the The Journal of Sebastian Valmont.
Plus, the ending with Bittersweet Symphony made that song a permanent part of the soundtrack of my life. I guess I was the right age (13 or so) to watch this because it's a straight up classic to me. I can't even find fault with it. I can even excuse the gay bashing because this movie was ages ago and that shit wouldn't fly today.
Dat ass tho.
I found the movie to be a fun experience plus I liked the actors... I would try the one they are putting on TV
I just love SMG, no shame.
Love Ryan Phillippe's over-the-top acting in this one! And I don't think I've been able to take him seriously as an actor since because of it.
it was pretty good for a mtv-era teen movie. sarah michelle gellar was deliciously evil. have not seen it in a long time, i'm sure it's dated as hell. but sarah michelle gellar will always have my allegiance for her non emmy nominated performance but eternally amazing performance in buffy the vampire slayer tv series.
It can't touch Dangerous Liaisons, of course, but it is great campy fun, especially Sarah Michrlle Gellar, the MVP of the movie. The soundtrack is the second best thing about it, followed by Selma Blair, who just cracks me up.
Ryan's beautiful ass is the best part of the film.
U kno this movie is pure gay fantasy when the male lead is the prettiest of them all!! Lol
Witherspoon was soooooooo much betta in Election released the same year.
& Phillipe was too Ken-doll pretty to be taken seriously as a Valmont
Only SMG gave a fun and appropriately campy performance.
Those erotic thrillers were fun. I miss them.
This was a favourite from my childhood, but rewatching it a year or so back really hit home just how dated it was. I don't know how to get my head around the fact that Cecile's mother is so scandalised that she kissed a black guy. And the 'could you be anymore queer' line. Joshua Jackson at least gets to have a bit of fun in that role, I suppose, and there's a queer person enjoying sex...
The performances are what it make it, and though this is Reese Witherspoon's weakest performance by some way (as you say, she's just plain miscast), SMG, Ryan Phillipe and Selma Blair sell the shit out of every zinger. There's a sense at the end that Kathryn had some feelings for Sebastian with SMG's 'goodbye, Sebastian', but I wish the movie had dealt into that more. Why does she seem so remorseless at her brother's funeral? Instead, it's too focused on providing a kick-ass montage to a pop hit that doesn't really make sense in context.
Besides Buffy, definitely my favourite Sarah Michelle Gellar performance. I think after Buffy, this, and I Know What You Did Last Summer, I was completely in love! :)
I don't know how to get my head around the fact that Cecile's mother is so scandalised that she kissed a black guy.
The forever taboo in interracial parings is black guy with white girl. Black women and white men hate it.
I have fond memories of this movie (and SMG...ok AND Dat Ass), but I haven't watched it in about 5 years. The gay slurs would probably make me cringe these days, but I think I'd still enjoy it overall. It's funny that they're bringing it to TV now since A.) that crappy straight-to-DVD sequel (starring Amy Adams in SMG's role) started out as a pilot, and B.) Gossip Girl was basically Cruel Intentions: the Series.
"And later when he runs to meet her at Penn Station, he finds her just like that AS IF YOU COULD FIND ANYONE IN PENN STATION BEFORE CEL PHONES."
But he was standing at the top of the escalator with the bouquet while the Counting Crows song played! It was romantic! Who cares how he found her!
"And the last time we see Annette she's shot the exact same way as Valmont was introduced during the opening credits, driving a convertible with dark sunglasses on, her hair whipping around. This is obviously intentional but is it suggesting that she's now the female version of Valmont (????). That makes no sense whatsoever, on any level"
But the Verve song that was playing was so good and iconic for the time period! Who cares whether it makes sense!
Oh well, that series where Sarah Michelle Gellar played the good and evil twins was really good. It didn't make much sense either, but I was sorry it was cancelled.
It's funny to look at a lot of these teen films from the late movies that were considered sexually risque (Cruel Intentions and also American Pie). Looking back at them in retrospect, despite foregrounding sex as a theme, they're so conservative and sex-negative in terms of their politics. Anything other than heterosexual sex is treated as deviant. Virgins are virtuous and "nicer" in both films. It's kind of gross.
Cruel Intentions has always felt to me like one of those "Of Its Time" hits - for anyone who saw it at the right age when it was released (or soon thereafter), it's an iconic part of their lives, but it doesn't play nearly as well on its own out of context. SMG is great campy fun, Kumble knows his way around sexy goings-on, and the song score is pretty great, but it's not exactly a good movie. The opening scene with Swoosie Kurtz (where Tara does indeed make a very short appearance on screen but is virtually unrecognizable through the tears, cry-ace, and "sad hair") is my favorite scene, but god there are great one-liners and ideas (that crucifix!). It never quite gets to full-on camp for me, though, and the last third is very wobbly even though that final montage to Bittersweet Symphony is killer.
It's funny to look at a lot of these teen films from the late 90's that were considered sexually risque (Cruel Intentions and American Pie). Looking back at them in retrospect, despite foregrounding sex as a theme, they're so conservative and sex-negative in terms of their politics. Anything other than heterosexual sex is treated as deviant. Virgins are virtuous and "nicer" in both films. It's kind of gross.
America is a sex-negative country. And thematic sexually explicit teen movies will follow protocol.
To paraphrase Denny, I saw it at the right age and it is an iconic part of my life.
I also agree with Suzanne that it is nonsense and I love it for that.
I'm not sure I agree with deriding it for being unrealistic when Dangerous Liaisons has an entire cast of 'French' aristocrats with American/English accents...
To reiterate almost everyone's post... Ryan Phillippe's ass. Oh my.
Are we all avoiding the Louise Fletcher non-appearance? What a way to bury an Oscar winner...
Does anyone else sometimes misremember Faye Dunaway being in this film, then remember that it's the Swoosie Kurtz link to The Rules Of Attraction? Maybe just me...
I unironically loved (and still love) this film. Yes, I probably saw it at the perfect age when I worshiped SMG and lusted over Ryan, but whatever. It was all so damn delicious.
Ha! Nat, I remember trying (and failing some) to find one another in Penn Station just last year.
Anyway, this movie is in no way good, but it's such a '90s trashure that it plays like a motion picture version of VF's Hollywood Issue (SMG! Ryan! Reese! Selma! Pacey from Dawson's Creek! That girl from American Pie! That dude from Save the Last Dance!).