Fave Film Scene Fridays: Dangerous Liaisons

I'm going to skip over the film that is next in line for my next Fave Friday film Scene, "Bob Roberts" in order to talk about my favorite scene in the number ten movie on my fave film list, Dangerous Liaisons. It is a film that I have been a rapt fan of since I first saw it years ago with a great friend of mine as a teenager and have just finished viewing again tonight.

"Her eyes are beginning to close."

There is not one frame, not one move, not one word in this film which has not been calculated to a most intelligent perfection. Everything about it is done masterfully, set design, shots, historical period costumes, music. It is a ballet of wickedness about two very very very bad people who play the most dangerous game of all.

Glenn Close as the Marquis deMarteuil and John Malkovich as Valmont are at the top of their game in every move they make. They meet each other as equals in every scene matching wit for wit and topping one another at every evil turn.

However it's watching Malkovich in this film that always gets to me. He does things so nuanced and clever, so insanely brilliant in this role that I believe them to be yet still unrealized.  With a deadpan, near sickening nonchalance, he delivers a performance that engages you through subtly built up emotional layers to empathize with an absolutely horrible human being. He does something internal that you can actually watch on screen not unlike the method acting process itself as he commences with playing a game he is so well versed in (namely seduction of the deeply virtuous) that he practically does it with hands tied behind his back. By the time he realizes that the line behind which he claims no "illusions"exist is crossed, it is much too late.

My absolute favorite scene in this movie is another completely wordless one, which could not have conveyed it's message more powerfully in any other way. It is the scene in which Valmont realizes he's in love with Madame deTourvel the pious married woman he is determined to seduce. They are all in attendance at an intimate classical singing performance when de Tourvel arrives, and her presence is like something you can feel rising up and driving wedge between the perverse but tight bond between Valmont and de Marteuil. She sits a few seats down from the couple and smiles politely at him. It's like watching him take a bullet. He is nearly undone by her effect on him and astonished possibly that he is even capable of feeling it. Madame deMarteuil watches all of this cooly and with learned dismissiveness as if she is not also reeling from it's affects. Valmont tries to compensate for this momentary lapse by kissing de Martueil's hand as a way of affirm his singular devotion to her, but it's too obvious and for the viewer appears to more strongly declare his genuine affections for Madame deTourvel.

Fave Film Scene Friday: Before Sunset

"I didn't forget about you and it pisses me off"

In the sequel to “Before Sunrise” Jesse and Celine encounter each other once more. When Celine attends a talk Jesse gives in Paris for his first book which chronicles the one day they met nine years ago in Europe they find that much of the magic and intimacy of that chance encounter is still burning beneath the jaded and domestic surfaces of their present daily lives.

There are many moments in “Before Sunset” that I love, so many little sparks and bursts, ebbs and flows that reflect the ease and comfort of their initial back and forth banter from "Before Sunrise." It's like revisiting old friends watching them learn more about one another and re-remember each other all over again. But the scene I love most is in the cab ride when all the shit comes down, when all the pretense is dropped and Celine loses it for a few minutes and lashes out at Jesse for returning and seemingly dangling his marriage and family in her face.  Jesse tells her finally how miserable he really is in his marriage and how even on the day he got married he was thinking of her, how he has a reoccurring dream about her passing him in a train car. “And you go by and you go by and you go by…and I wake up with the fucking sweats….” So much happens in that car ride, it’s almost as if they turn a new corner in their own relationship that begs a whole new question of them in a matter of minutes through sheer, brutal revelation.

Favorite Film Scene Friday (on a Saturday)

My second week doing this and already I've flaked. Well I'm doin it anyway.
My next favorite film scene is from the second movie on my fave list, "Before Sunrise." For a dialogue junky like me, this film is just a parade. And for a person who loves to travel it's got everything I want going for it. There are so many scenes in "Before Sunrise" movie I can call my favorite but the one that really gets to me every single time is one that actually has no dialoge at all.

Jesse and Celine who have only just met hours ago on a train walk into a used record store in Europe and Celine selects an album by Kath Bloom that she likes. She and Jesse go into a listening booth to hear it. What happens in that minute and a half between them is so palpable, sweet and intimate and playful. Whenever I watch it I imagine a range of different things they could be thinking. I imagine the unsaid dialogue that is being exchanged between them as the music and Kath's singing sort of shamelessly exposes Jess and Celines' building affection for one another.