First published in 1782, Pierre Shoderlos de Lacrox’s evil novel “Les Liaisons Dangerous” is a modern high school hall where teens show their gender, power and status like weapons. Only light airbrushes need to be transplanted to your satisfaction. Nonetheless, director Rachel Suissa carries out the story of lacrosse through a heavy Instagram filter in this quirky, flimsy adaptation.
Tristan (Simon Rérolle) and Vanessa (Ella Pellegrini) are a couple of influential people at Victor Hugo High School in Biarritz, a coastal town in southern France. He is a rapper and a champion surfer. She is a declining child actor. Together, these good-performing lovers share 10 million social media followers-and her Luddite advantage over her shallow classmates by bringing Proust’s hardcover to the pool party. An agreement to seduce and destroy Serene (Paola Locateri), the dominant technology bachelor. They don’t care. “You can be a loser, noble or rich,” says Tristan, proclaiming a treatise for this update. “Today it’s all about fame.”
Suissa flaunts the considerable amount of director Moxy needed to complete an ecstasy pill-fueled script, written in collaboration with Slimane-Baptiste Berhoun. The energy of the movie is most colorful in the corner where minor characters dance in blue mohawks and roam around make-up parties dressed like mermaids and nuns. The hilarious Héloïse Janjaud plays a flashy student who is anxious to transform into a leather vamp, and she almost empowers herself. But if this movie wants to compete with the erotic palpitation and moral decline of the “cruel intent” that is an adaptation of Lacrosse’s 1999 teen drama, it really has more threes from Leroll. Needs: Instead of transforming from cad to an honest lover, his character simply shifts from calm to cold, and as its emotional palpitations begin to shake, it throws cold water into the triangle of desire.
Playing the structure of the novel’s epistolary novel, Suissa makes high school students vomit their anguish with live-streamed epistolary novels. It’s a clever idea, but while it’s running, an app-fueled drama-focused movie reduces important moments for those staring at the phone.
Dangerous contact
Unrated. In French, with subtitles. Execution time: 1 hour 49 minutes. Watch it on Netflix.
