SOURCE: O'Brien, Tom. “Bland and Better Than Bland.” Commonweal 116, no. 21 (1 December 1989): 670-71.

In the following excerpt, O'Brien argues that Valmont is more sensitive to the underlying humanity of its characters than Stephen Frears' Dangerous Liaisons.

First things first: Valmont is not a remake of Dangerous Liaisons. Generally, it tells the same story; tonally, it is a completely different, sometimes better, sometimes weaker film. Its source is not the Broadway play, but the original novel; on the other hand, the film's credits declare it is “loosely based” on Laclos's text. Its new flavor reflects the humanistic vision of the director, Milos Forman (twice a big winner at the Oscars with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Amadeus), who continues to persist in his faith that nothing human can be wholly vile.

Valmont takes Forman back to the age of Amadeus, pre-French revolutionary Europe; Mozart, conducted again by Neville...