Dangerous Liaisons.

MICHELLE PFEIFFER, out of her element, her upswept hairdo undercutting her looks, her earnestly delivered dialogue ringing ever so slightly cracked in her mouth, is nonetheless the best thing about the appalling Dangerous Liaisons. Choderlos de Laclos's novel is one of the most awesome books ever written, and my respect for it is limitless; Christopher Hampton's sophomoric stage adaptation showed little true understanding for the geometry of its design, the icy purity of its language, and the absolute decorum of its evil, inserting, instead, giggly prurience and all sorts of anachronisms and trendy irrelevancies. Of course, over and above the fact that a great fiction does not lend itself to either the stage or the screen, Les Liaisons dangereuses, by being an epistolary novel, makes transposition even harder. The movie version, written by Hampton and directed by Stephen Frears (My Beautiful Laundrette, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid), makes a stab at the epistolary but promptly gives up on it.

The main difference-among so many devastating ones-between novel and film is that in Laclos everything is supremely beautiful except the souls of the two principals, the Marquise de Mertouil and the Vicomte de Valmont. In the film, not even the stiltedly British intonations of Glenn Close's obviously disingenuous Merteuil or the vulgar Chicago accent of John Malkovich's Valmont can pass muster, let alone these actors' appearances. Miss Close (pregnant during the shooting) looks like an albino Indian head on top of a pile of melting wax-pale wax with an archipelago of freckles on its billows. Malkovich has a snub nose, receding hairline, petulant gaze, breathy-whiny voice, and bandy legs that don't know how to walk in period clothes. Merteuil, in short, is a saccharine harridan, and Valmont seems to be his own valet. As for Uma Thurman's Cecile, she is an overgrown, gangly, goofy English barmaid.

Similar uglification befalls almost every aspect of the film, from the modernized and tarted-up language to Valmont's shooing away Mme. de Volanges (Swoosie Kurtz, suffering from advanced hebetude) by hissing at her like some barnyard fowl. In his play, Hampton invented the coarse business of having Valmont write an ardent love letter to the virtuous Mme. de Tourvel (Miss Pfeiffer) using a whore's bare arse for escritoire; in the movie, he doubles the cheapness by also having Cecile, in bed with Valmont, write a love letter to her chaste soupirant on Valmont's naked back. By way of ultimate authenticity, Malkovich speaks of Miss Close as "Madam de Mairtooee."

Frears has no sense of eighteenthcentury painting in his compositions, or music in his rhythms. The film's concluding scenes are rushed through in unseemly hugger-mugger. When, at the end, Mme. de Merteuil is supposed to look unspeakably disfigured, she looks no worse than Miss Close did all along. When Valmont announces the surrender of his prime victim, Malkovich shouts, "Success! Success!" as he bounds up the Marquise's staircase-something totally out of character. To show his refinement, the Chicagoan say"appressiate"-but also pronounces the h i"dishonest."

The film is visually exquisite thanks to good costume design, a fine French chiteau and gardens, and Philippe Rousselot's lyrical cinematography. But all this serves merely to underscore the sleaziness of the writing, acting, and directing.