An Evil Marriage

Les Liaisons Dangerouses (Astor) is an offense against taste, a baldly commercial celebration of the Gallic religion of disgust. At the same time it is a wickedly funny comedy of promiscuities `a la franqaise. The mixture seems sure to produce a succes de scandale.

Actually the scandal started 180 years ago, when a French artillery general, Pierre-Ambroise Franqois Choderlos de Laclos. published a novel that seriously proposed and wittily elaborated a science of seduction, a yoga of the boudoir. The book survives as an unholy missal of impudicity, a small black classic that, in literary opinion, excuses its sins with its skill. Three years ago. Director Roger Vadim (And God Created Woman) announced his intention to make a movie of it in modern dress. As one man. the powerful Society of Men of Letters rose to protest an artistic crime quite as heinous, the word went around, as "having Madame Bovary dance bebop.''

When Vadim made the movie anyway, the Society filed suit to stop him from using the book's title. Half a dozen members of De Gaulle's Cabinet trotted off to a screening, trotted back with a decision : the film could be shown to adults in France. But the Ministry of Information forbade exhibition abroad. In the opinion of the government, which at that time was strenuously laundering the national reputation, France was already far too well known for its feelthy peectures. But three months ago, Vadim won a reversal of the restriction. Liaisons, which had busted French box-office records, was sold for $350,000 to a U.S. distributor.

"To hide nothing; to try everything.'' This is the motto of Vadim's hero and heroine (Gerard Philipe and Jeanne Moreau), a man and wife who not only tolerate but even energetically promote each other's affaires de corps. And then, afterward--oo la la! What fun it is to lie in bed together and tell what happened. One night the wife has the sulks: her lover of the moment has jilted her for an innocent young girl (Jeanne Valerie) whom he plans to wed. The wife simply must get even. Would the husband mind ever so much if she asked him to seduce the intended bride? Not at all. Least a man can do to protect his wife's reputation. With zest, the husband consumes the maiden's virtue, and then goes on to dessert: a respectable young mother (Annette Vadim, the director's ex-wife).

Up to this point, Vadim's amused, amusing manner suggests that he is merely playing games of love. But suddenly, surreally, as in the cautionary cartoons of Honore Daumier or Felicien Rops, the mask of painted sophistication is ripped away to reveal the grinning skull with its swarm of worms. In a vicious series of rebounding betrayals, the husband is murdered, the wife is disfigured, the virtuous young mother goes insane.

Liaisons is clearly the best movie Vadim has made. Actress Moreau and Actor Philipe (who died six months after the film was finished) give formidably accomplished performances, and the script, if it lacks something of the satanic intensity of the novel, is orderly, intelligent and relentlessly witty. Rumors to the contrary notwithstanding. Liaisons is not a peep show--women are seen naked in two scenes, but then not much of them is actually seen. What is truly shocking in this picture has nothing to do with sex. It has to do with evil. The two main characters seem to be seducing people, but are actually destroying them. They are serpents who carry their venom in their loins.

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