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Les Liaisons dangereuses is an 18th century Epistolary Novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, adapted as a stage play by the same name and as the 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons. It was adapted the very next year as the film Valmont and later updated in 1999 to a modern high school as Cruel Intentions.
The story follows wealthy aristocrats engaged in a malicious bet involving sexual conquests, revenge, manipulation, seduction, and love in the sophisticated, and decadent atmosphere of 18th century French high society.
Tropes used in Dangerous Liaisons:[]
- Added Alliterative Appeal: The main characters are the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil.
- All Women Are Prudes: Zig-zagged- it's implied that all the "virtuous" women are at best indifferent, but Tourvel is something of a grey area.
- Arranged Marriage: Cecile's mother has one planned for her.
- The Bet
- Break the Haughty: Merteuil in the end.
- Byronic Hero: Tourvel and Volanges certainly consider Valmont to be this
- Convenient Miscarriage: Cecile's.
- Corrupt the Cutie: Cecile.
- Costume Porn
- Cry for the Devil: Merteuil's ultimate fate is somewhat of an overkill.
- Death by Despair: Tourvel
- Death Equals Redemption: It's only as he's dying that Valmont does something good.
- Double Standard: The novel makes much of the inherent unfairness in the way women's and men's reputations are affected by sexual rumors.
- Do Not Do This Cool Thing: As much as you are *supposed* to see these pompous, virgin-corrupting, manipulative sex addicts as the bad guys... you can't help but admire them and perhaps even subconsciously absorb a little of their experience in the love game.
- Moral Guardians have been accusing the author's intent of being this since the book was published.
- Duel of Seduction
- Duel to the Death
- Epistolary Novel: Though the film has the characters meeting and discussing things they write in the book, it still retains a lot of letter writing. Often with original substitutes for a desk.
- Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Merteuil fakes this extremely well, pretty much out of necessity. (Keeping up a not just good but absolutely unassailable reputation is the only way to ensure that anyone spreading rumors about what she's really up to won't be believed.)
- Idle Rich: Virtually all of the cast.
- The Ingenue: Cecile. So very much.
- Literary Agent Hypothesis: Laclos uses the framing device that he discovered the journals and is publishing them, and comments on how Moral Guardians likely object but he is publishing them for a moral purpose (namely that people like Valmont and Merteuil are bad and others should avoid being taken in by someone like them)
- Ladykiller in Love: Valmont, though he is so jaded he doesn't notice he is in love until it's pointed out to him.
- Manipulative Bastard: Valmont but especially Merteuil, the Trope Codifier for Manipulative Bitch. A proto-feminist letter argues that there was no other other way for a woman to get ahead and live the life she wanted in the 18th century.
- The Masochism Tango: Valmont and Merteuil take this to its logical extreme with Valmont's death as a direct result of Merteuil's manipulation of Danceny, shortly followed by Merteuil's humiliation by Valmont's manipulation of Danceny.
- Nature Adores a Virgin: Played straight with Madame do Tourvel, inverted with Cecile.
- Not Himself
- The Pornomancer: Averted; the characters spend quite a lot of time on the planning and implementation of a seduction.
- The Queen's Latin
- Recycled in Space: Besides Cruel Intentions, one miniseries set the story in 1960s France and the South Korean film Untold Scandal transplants the story from 18th Century France to 18th Century Korea. An upcoming adaptation plans to set the story in 1930s China.
- Sliding Scale of Shiny Versus Gritty
- Snow Means Death
- Stepford Smiler: Catherine/de Merteuil is very much type C
- This Means War
- Title Drop
- Unholy Matrimony: Valmont and Merteuil
- Villainous Breakdown: When Merteuil learns of Valmont's death
- Villain Protagonists
- Virginity Makes You Stupid
- White Shirt of Death