Dangerous Liaisons (1988)
Directed by Stephen Frears
No — Dangerous Liaisons is not especially woke, scoring 22 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.
Stephen Frears has assembled a drawing room full of aristocrats who treat human affection as a chess problem, and he films their cruelty with the patience of a man arranging flowers.
Consciousness Markers
The Marquise de Merteuil is a formidable female schemer who articulates the constraints placed on women in a repressive society and weaponizes her sexuality as power. However, this is a morally ambiguous portrait of manipulation rather than a modern feminist polemic.
The film is a wickedly witty drawing-room drama that seduces rather than preaches; any social commentary is embedded in dialogue and character rather than delivered as a lecture.
The cast is entirely white European aristocracy, with no diverse or color-conscious casting choices. The ensemble reflects the historical French nobility without any modern representational intent.
There are no LGBTQ+ themes or characters; the scheming is entirely heterosexual in nature.
The film engages no racial themes whatsoever; it is a closed world of white 18th-century French aristocrats.
No environmental or climate themes are present.
While the aristocrats are decadent and cruel, the film offers no critique of capitalism or economic structures; it is a study of personal sexual power games, not class economics.
No body-positivity themes; the film's treatment of Cécile's body is one of exploitation and violation, not affirmation.
No neurodivergence themes or characters are present.
The film is a faithful period adaptation of an 18th-century novel, not a revisionist reframing of history.
Why it received this score
Stephen Frears has assembled a drawing room full of aristocrats who treat human affection as a chess problem, and he films their cruelty with the patience of a man arranging flowers. The Marquise de Merteuil (Glenn Close) and the Vicomte de Valmont (John Malkovich) wager over the ruin of a convent girl and the faith of a pious wife. The costumes are ravishing. The châteaux are immaculate. Nobody learns anything, which is the point.
There is a case to be made for the Marquise as a proto-feminist figure. She delivers a speech about the repressive cage built for women and the strategies required to survive inside it, and she wields her sexuality as an instrument of power in a world that offers her no other. But the film refuses to sanctify her. She ruins an innocent, destroys a friend, and ends the picture alone at the opera, booed by the very society she manipulated. This is a portrait of appetite, not a manifesto. The camera observes her intelligence without endorsing her methods.
Everything else here is period furniture. The cast is uniformly pale European nobility, a closed world with no interest in the racial or sexual categories that preoccupy our own moment. There is no economic argument to be extracted from these idle rich, only a study of personal conquest. The film seduces instead of sermonizing, trusting its audience to feel the chill without being told where to place their sympathies. It won three Academy Awards for its screenplay, costumes, and production design, and it earns them. A cold, elegant machine. It has nothing to teach us and no intention of trying.
It is, in the end, a film about the pleasure of watching clever people ruin each other, and it offers no remedy, no lesson, and no program for social improvement. The sommelier would approve. We are left with the vintage, and the vintage is excellent, and it is entirely of its own era, untouched by ours, asking nothing of us but our attention. That attention is repaid in full, and then some, which is more than most films can say for themselves, and considerably more than the current crop of earnest entertainments manages on any given weekend at the multiplex. A grim little masterpiece, and proudly unreformed. We score it accordingly, with a certain weariness, and move on to the next screening.
Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm
Part of
Synopsis
In 18th century France, Marquise de Merteuil asks her ex-lover Vicomte de Valmont to seduce the future wife of another ex-lover of hers in return for one last night with her. Yet things don’t go as planned.
Questions about Dangerous Liaisons
Is Dangerous Liaisons woke?
No — Dangerous Liaisons is not especially woke, scoring 22 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Based.
Does Dangerous Liaisons have any woke elements?
1 of the 10 markers register at 30 or above, led by Feminist Agenda (30). On Feminist Agenda: The Marquise de Merteuil is a formidable female schemer who articulates the constraints placed on women in a repressive society and weaponizes her sexuality as power.
How does Dangerous Liaisons compare to other 1988 movies?
It ranks #9 of the 73 films from 1988 we've scored; their average is 10. The wokest is Stand and Deliver (58).
How is the Woke Score calculated?
An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.