Jin-ho paces the action out in a way that’s as seductive as his characters
When it finally does, by movie’s end, the effect is complete devastation. They never seem to allow anything earthy, or harsh and gritty, to touch them. The light shimmers on the skin of the actors here in a way that not only speaks of perfection, sex and desire, but also something not quite healthy. Everything in it, even the most mundane interior setting, seems bathed in a golden, sunset glow by cinematographer Kim Byung-seo. We’re used to films coating a world and characters in a glamorous sheen but director Hur Jin-ho and his team here have achieved something quite special it’s rare that objects and human beings ever look this good, even in the movies. It’s behind veils of bitterness, pride and prudishness where De Laclos’ knife-twister most delights, after all, something this performance-rich “Liaisons” understands.There’s an otherworldly feel about this gorgeous-to-look-at Chinese-Singapore co-production. Zhang, expertly conveying someone closed off yet silently sensual, even rolls out a tear during a moment of impending intimacy as exquisitely timed as a dancer’s move. Visual sumptuousness trumps the coldly erotic dastardliness of previous incarnations, but where this version feasts is on close-ups, with exchanges between pairs of eyes - the predatory versus the hesitant, the manipulatively comforting opposite the blindly vulnerable - that recall the silent era.
The latest, Chinese director Hur Jin-ho’s “Dangerous Liaisons,” adapted by Yan Geling, lays this timeless boudoir chess board over the moneyed class in 1930s Shanghai, where a wealthy businesswoman (an agreeably devilish Cecilia Cheung) and a roguish playboy (Dong-gun Jang) wager over the carnal conquests of a tycoon’s virginal teen bride (Wang Yijin) and a morally upright, widowed teacher (Zhang Ziyi).
It speaks to the storytelling heft of Choderlos de Laclos’ 18th-century French novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” that there’s nary a bad adaptation of his dryly venal yarn of sexual gamesmanship.
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