love vince vaughan. owen wilson is a funny man. this is a reprehensible movie. laughs there may be, but why does every hollywood flick with a trashy premise need to spend its final forty minutes apologising for and redeeming the trashy premise via a soppy sentimental ending. bof!

one more installment in the noble history of adapting Choderlos de Laclos’ epistolary novel for the screen. this one enacts the drama through the lives of franco-anglo society types in paris in the 1960s. the pacing of the film is quite different to earlier versions, and the denouement differently weighted, morally speaking. Rupert Everett is a fine Valmont to Catherine Deneuve’s Madame de Merteuil. I found the overdubbing of the film (the soundtrack was originally recorded in French and English) extremely annoying and distracting.