Dangerous Liaisons

Les Liaisons Dangereuses is a frightening and ultimately scathing portrait of a decadent society that was first published in 1782 only a few years before the French Revolution. At its center are two aristocrats who were once lovers and who now play a complex game of manipulation and seduction to liven up their dreary lives. The Vicomte de Valmont is tasked by the Marquise de Merteuil with seducing an innocent convent girl but he is equally focused on a righteous married woman. The results however turn out to be more dire and fatal than Merteuil and Valmont could have imagined as their schemes grow more cunning and they discover that their human pawns are behaving in ways they did not expect.