Thanks for locating that, and for the hint about the music. I would have preferred harpsichords myself.

Choderlos De Laclos was a fascinating character, who played a small but influential part in the French Revolution and helped invent the artillery shell (he was a professional soldier). His novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, transports you seamlessly into pre-revolutionary France. You feel like you know the place after finishing it, at least, the rarefied circles of the aristocracy. Scholars are still debating whether it was a condemnation of the amorality of the age, or a nostalgia romp lamenting its passing. The characters are not very nice people, but they are intelligent, charming, capable, sexy and fascinating. You can't help but like them.

In translation, the text reads like modern prose, a contrast to English writers from the same period, like Fielding, who come across as dated and stuffy. The book has been filmed several times, at least twice set in modern times, with Genevieve Bujold and Sarah Michelle Gellar in the Marquise's role, and twice as a costumer, the Milos Forman version you review, and a superior film (I think) starring Close and Malkovich as the Marquise and Valmont. In spite of the incomparable Ms Bening's sparkling performance, I prefer the latter. After all, John Malkovich demolishes Colin Firth as a sleazemaster. But either film is well worth renting. You might find this story particularly interesting, these were the kind of people Franklin and Jefferson had to deal with.