By Chuck Graham, TucsonStage.com
If you enjoyed all the earlier movie versions or the 18th century French novel “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” by Chhoderlos de Laclos, you will definitely appreciate the new Chinese version now playing at the Loft Cinema, 3233 E. Speedway Blvd..
Directed by Hur Jin-ho, set in the 1930s in flagrantly degenerate Shanghai, the ceremonial manners of this city’s high society are the perfect turf for such an evergreen tale of sexual gamesmanship.
Style reigns as king and the tilt of one’s sunglasses can reveal as much as China’s old school implied language of the fans.
The playboy rogue Xie Yifan (Dong-gun Jang) may be aping Clark Gable’s smirky grin, but he does it with an undercoat of femininity that is genuinely creepy.
Would he be happy to de-flower a cheery schoolgirl? No question, especially if doing so would have the added consequences of embarrassing his rival.
Wang Yijin plays the virginal bride whose marriage is only acceptable to her hard-hearted tycoon husband if she is a virgin at the altar.
Mo Jieyu (Cecelia Cheung) is the wealthy businesswoman who makes the bet with Xie.
Completing this chain of do-or-be-done-to is the morally uptight widowed teacher Du Fenyu (Ziyi Zhang).
If you know the plot already, it definitely adds to the pleasure, for it is the unspoken words, the hungers that must be suppressed public, that give this film its tension.
The clothes, the cars, the parties, everything about this bored clique of self-absorbed socialites is designed to imply much and accept responsibility for very little.
Wanting it all but denying they want anything is the game these people play. Could there be a better definition for the current quality we know as “cool?”
I don’t think so.
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