Word: valmont
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...bookend to the story of a great beauty, the kind that, along with an irresistible purity, entranced an incorrigible seducer named Valmont two decades ago, as well as a moviegoing public and now - only now, barely now - threatens to fade. As Lea points out, a good body does last a long time. So can a good face. But the undercurrent of what she's saying is that nothing lasts forever. She first gets involved with the 19-year-old Chéri, the indolent son of another highly successful retired courtesan (Kathy Bates) because she enjoys his youth and beauty...
...cacti; fake chimneys and air-conditioning huts; ersatz silos and water towers home to no liquid or grain. One company raised the roof of a McDonald's to conceal some antennas. Another stashed wireless gear inside signs for BP stations and Red Roof Inns. The camouflage unit of Valmont Industries, based in Omaha, Neb., received a request for a 115-ft. saguaro cactus, which would have been triple the plant's natural height. "You'd turn around and run if you saw something like that," says the company's tree specialist, Jim Casqueiro. The solution: split the coverage area...
...directorial debut in French. He's also getting broader exposure playing the cynical and snakelike statesman Talleyrand in a miniseries on Napoleon currently running with great fanfare on French television. The role requires Malkovich to ooze the delicious malevolence he has made his signature, most memorably as Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons. In person, though, Malkovich is nothing like his scary screen personas. "I'm not the least bit cynical or manipulative," he says - but with enough forced grace to make you wonder whether he is being just that. He left America 13 years ago and for almost a decade...
...players on the stage. I don't know the book - I read a rave review in the Times and wanted to see something "classy." I'm enjoying the Christopher Hampton dialogue very much, very clever, deliciously malicious. Suddenly, Madame de Tourvel collapses at the feet of Allan Rickman's Valmont. A shiver like a drug rush runs down my spine...
...last scene the production recovers from its temporary lull, with Mertueil playing cards with her friends and insisting that they "continue with the game." Valmont is dead, Mertueil is alone, and the victims of their plan are left to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives. It is a bleak but appropriate ending. The petty plotting of the aristocrats has destroyed any hope for happiness, but they must keep up their appearances. If such deceitful events transpired under the pretenses of a classy and restrained society, imagine what would happen if these characters really let loose...