Dangerous Liaisons

High-stakes manipulation used to require powdered wigs, quill pens, and expensive stationery; now, all you need is a verified badge and a decent data plan in the South of France. Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ 1782 epistolary novel is one of the most durable skeletons in the cinematic closet, having been dressed up in everything from the 1988 prestige of Stephen Frears to the 1999 neon-drenched cynicism of Cruel Intentions. Enter director Rachel Suissa, who decided that the 2020s needed a version where the "liaisons" aren't just dangerous, they’re geotagged. I watched this while trying to untangle a pair of wired headphones I found in a junk drawer, and the irony of struggling with 2010s tech while watching a movie about the hyper-digital present wasn’t lost on me.

The Digital Downgrade of Deception

The premise remains classic: a bet is made to corrupt the incorruptible. In this iteration, Célène (Paola Locatelli) is the idealistic "new girl" moving to Biarritz. She’s a bookish romantic who hasn't yet been chewed up by the social machinery of her new elite high school. Standing in the shadows are the resident puppet masters: Vanessa (Ella Pellegrini), an Instagram queen with a following that doubles as a private army, and Tristan (Simon Rérolle), a celebrity surfer who looks like he was grown in a lab specifically to break hearts and sell wetsuits.

The shift from letters to social media is the most obvious update, and frankly, it makes the original story’s cruelty feel much more plausible for a modern audience. We live in a world where a "story" can ruin a life in fifteen seconds, so the central wager—Tristan must seduce Célène or lose his status/social media kingdom—has a certain bite. However, while the 1988 version felt like a deadly chess match, this version often feels more like a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos—it’s loud, fast, and lacks the predatory patience that made the source material so chilling. Paola Locatelli, who is a massive influencer in France in real life, brings a naturalism to Célène that I didn't expect, but she’s often fighting against a script that treats her intelligence as a plot point rather than a character trait.

Surfing the Algorithm in Biarritz

If nothing else, Dangerous Liaisons (2022) is the cinematic equivalent of a luxury Instagram filter. The cinematography by Giovanni Fiore Coltellacci turns Biarritz into a shimmering, sun-drenched playground that looks expensive even when the dialogue feels cheap. There’s a certain "Netflix Blue" aesthetic here—oversaturated, high-contrast, and designed to look good on a smartphone screen—but it fits the subject matter. These characters live their lives through lenses, so it’s only appropriate that their world looks slightly artificial.

The problem is that the film coasts on its visuals. We get plenty of slow-motion surfing montages and scenes of Simon Rérolle looking pensive against the horizon, but I kept waiting for the psychological screws to tighten. In the 1988 Frears film, you could feel the walls of the French court closing in on the victims. Here, the ocean is too wide, the sun is too bright, and the stakes feel as fleeting as a trending hashtag. Ella Pellegrini does her best with the "Queen Bee" trope, but she lacks the terrifying, bone-deep malice that Glenn Close brought to the role of the Marquise de Merteuil. In this version, the villainy feels like a brand strategy rather than a soul-deep corruption.

Performance vs. Persona

There is a strange, meta quality to the casting that I found more interesting than the plot itself. Choosing Paola Locatelli—a girl who essentially grew up in the public eye of French social media—to play the "innocent" who is wary of the digital world is a clever bit of subversion. It’s just a shame the film doesn't do more with it. The chemistry between her and Simon Rérolle is serviceable, but it lacks the dangerous, combustible friction that makes you believe these two could actually destroy one another. Instead, they feel like two very attractive people who are destined to have a complicated "It’s Complicated" status for a few months before moving on to their next brand deal.

Interestingly, this film was largely overlooked upon its release, buried under the sheer weight of Netflix’s "Young Adult" churn. It’s part of a streaming-era trend where classic IP is mined for its recognizable name, updated with Gen-Z signifiers, and released with almost no fanfare outside of its local market. It’s a bit of a "lost" film not because it’s hard to find—it’s literally a click away—but because it’s a casualty of the algorithm. It was designed to be consumed and replaced in the same weekend, a fate that would have horrified the social-climbing egoists of the original novel.

The 2022 Dangerous Liaisons is a perfectly fine way to spend a rainy afternoon if you want to look at beautiful people in a beautiful location. It captures the frantic, performative anxiety of the influencer age with some success, and Paola Locatelli is a genuine talent to watch in the future. But if you’re looking for the sharp, intellectual cruelty that made this story a classic for over two hundred years, you’re better off looking elsewhere. It’s a stylish distraction, but ultimately, it’s all scroll and no substance.