Cruel Intentions (1999)
Based on: Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782)
Director: Roger Kumble
Had I seen this before: Yes, a long time ago
One of the problems with doing several high school movies in a row is that they have a tendency to register somewhere on the "funny and/or charming" scale, and after a bit I start to worry that it's all getting a little too same-y. So I thought I would pivot and throw in a film that I find neither funny nor charming, just to change things up--in fact, this one isn't even really a school movie, just for good measure. (Listen, they talk about school a lot and Sarah Michelle Gellar wears her school uniform in the last scene and I don't want to have rewatched it for no reason, so we're doing this.) I did glance at the Letterboxd page for this film just to get the temperature over there and it seems like this is one of those things that a certain age group mistakenly remembers as being good or at least fun, so I'm going to re-issue my perennial disclaimer: it's okay to like bad movies! I personally do it all the time. And also, my bona fides: I watched several seasons of the original run of Gossip Girl, so I don't want it to seem like I think I'm above this genre. I just wanted it to be better!
The real problem with this movie for me is that I was the sort of insufferable cinephile teenager who already had a very positive relationship with the 1988 Stephen Frears film Dangerous Liaisons by the time this movie came out and I absolutely did not understand the point of making a worse version, with children. Glenn Close and John Malkovich and Michelle Pfeiffer and Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves had already put in the work, that's not enough for you people? You need Ryan Phillippe with his Justin Timberlake hair and Joker smile to retread this ground? You think because Glenn Close keeps having near-misses with Oscar she needs to be updated as a coked-up Sarah Michelle Gellar yelling increasingly absurd things? (The fact that this movie is tagged as "Cerebral" on Amazon really sent me down a certain kind of path with it, I implore you to watch this and ask yourself whether the dialogue is engaging your cerebrum in a complex manner.) You had a luminous and enchanting 18-year-old Uma Thurman playing the innocent music student who is very understandably pining for her teacher Keanu Reeves and thought "what if this situation, but it's 27-year-old Selma Blair and we instruct her to dress and emote as though she is a petulant kindergartener"? (I know there are a lot of things in this movie that are supposed to be upsetting, but the fact that multiple people were trying to romance this character that clearly has a mental age well below ten was actually upsetting.) Reese? Reese is fine. I appreciated that Nurse Ratched was there to keep the vibes a little weird. And shout out to Swoozie Kurtz, who I believe is the only person to appear in both films. You get that bag, Swoozie.
Mostly this movie just left me with a lot of questions. For example, I was not very familiar with the concept of revenge porn in the late 90s, did it generally take the form of a tasteful nude photo that does not show anything explicit but does have the word "slut" flashing in bright blue while the You've Got Mail voice says "slut" over and over? How can Sebastian's alcoholic father be both impotent and diddling the maid? When Sebastian mentions his journal and Katherine asks "could you be more queer" like an even more homophobic Chandler Bing, is that...a thing? Fellas, is it gay to write things down? Was Samuel Pepys gay? (Samuel Pepys might have been gay, I do not know anything about his personal life, pretty ironic when you think about it!) Sebastian also indicates that email is "for geeks and pedophiles," and I guess I probably qualify as one of those things, but I'm almost sure by 1999 I was using email for official school-type communications, so was my school more technologically advanced than the fancy Manhattan prep school that has incubated all these monsters or did Sebastian just never bother registering an address? And do you think Katherine ever thinks back to that conversation as a middle-aged lady who definitely spends her days spamming her MLM downline? And finally, where in the timeline from targeting Annette for seduction, making a wager regarding said seduction, falling in love with her, refusing to sleep with her, sleeping with her, breaking up with her, getting slapped, chasing after her to win her back, then dying suddenly and unexpectedly, did Sebastian take the time to amend his will in order to bequeath his cool car to her? Frankly it's the most responsible and forward-thinking move his character makes in the entire film, I just would have liked to see the scene in his attorney's office where he is like "if I get in a sex-related fist-fight and fall into traffic very soon, make sure Annette gets my wheels." Or do we think Annette just fully broke bad at the end and stole the Jag?
Anyway. Let's end on a nice note with some things that I liked. I had a very intense attachment to the Counting Crows song "Colorblind" in the early 2000s, so its presence did cause me to feel some emotions in the midst of this movie, although not about this movie, per se. When the teens volunteer at a nursing home, they walk by an old lady who is repeatedly spraying a parrot with water as the parrot says "Stop it" over and over. This is by far the best part of the movie. Sebastian started to grow on me a little once he got sad and started dressing like a vampire. It's sort of interesting to watch the earnest scenes between Reese and Ryan knowing that they would get married a couple of months later and eventually have two children who look exactly like them and then get divorced and then Reese would get drunk and yell "I'M A U.S. CITIZEN" at a cop during a traffic stop (that last bit isn't really relevant, it just still makes me laugh). Finally, all the slow-motion, disapproving head-shaking in the last scene as Katherine's many crimes are made public and her special cocaine cross necklace is revealed for all the world to see is extremely amusing.
Line I repeated quietly to myself: "Why should I care?"
Is it under two hours: Yes
In conclusion: Again, I'm so sorry, but the more movies I cover the more I am just not convinced that Regina George is even that mean at all? She what, kept a private burn book? Please.
A Pile of Exotic Fruits Next to a Bottle of Mineral Water from H-E-B
No one really eats in this movie, probably because of all the coke, but the most iconic scene--Sarah Michelle Gellar teaching (27-year-old) Selma Blair how to kiss--did have an artfully arranged stack of exotic fruits next to a bottle of mineral water. I couldn't find a star fruit and I recently discovered that I don't like figs, so this lot will have to do.
Up next: A teen take on a classic tale (3/4)
