Valmont Incapable of Loving anyone..he's a real bastard
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FloatingOpera7 — 14 years ago(May 16, 2011 01:35 AM)
Well Madame De Tourvel did fall in love with Valmont. She was missing the love of her husband who was away pursuing his career. But she's the only one in the whole movie who really falls in love. The character played by Umma Thurman and Keanu Reeves find it easy to have sex with people they aren't in love with. I realize that Umma's character (I think her name was Cecile ?) she was raped by Valmont but she continued to sleep with him after that. I mean instead of hating his ass and letting the whole world know he raped her so he could be put to jail, she says nothing about it and continues to sleep with him. I'm sure that a man like him in the old days might have gotten away with rape because back then the aristocratic powerful dukes, counts and so forth were treated as being "above the law". But she kept sleeping with him. I mean seriously a real romantic wouldn't have sex with a person they didn't love. And certainly a romantic would never rape anyone. Sex for a romantic person who really knows how to love is exclusive with one person only and finds the sharing of his or her body as a holy sort of thing, a very deep bond reserved for one person. Some people are like this out there, it's not a dying breed. All I see in this movie, especially with the principal characters of Madame Montreul and Valmont (Close and Malkovitch) are a bunch of decadent French sex addicts. Valmont is a villain, not a hero. He's a bad guy who happens to be the lead character. But he's really bad, just as bad as Madame de Montreul. Valmont rapes a young girl and corrupts her. He is a lying cheating wolf. He's just a nasty evil man! This is a movie about two nasty former lovers who play sex games with innocent people whom they corrupt. I wouldn't be surprised if something like this really did happen in the 18th century. The long period of grand luxury and wealth enjoyed by the Ancien Regime - that is the high nobility before the Revolution removed the system of kings, were said to be decadent even perverted. This was after all the time of the Marquis de Sade, a more perverted, wicked man as ever found on earth - he physically brutalized and tortured women for his sexual pleasure. In Dangerous Liasons, the emotional torture and the dumping of one lover another seems to be the gratification that people like Valmont and Montreul get.
This movie was based on a play in turn based on an actual 18th century book. The time must surely be during the reign of King Louis the 15th which was said to have been the most decadent. The way they dress and the decor of the furniture also clearly indicates Louis the 15th. This was during the 2 or 3 decades just before the French Revolution. King Louis the 15th himself had countless of women and lovers and fathered so many bastard children. To this date, scholars can't even count just how many women he had.
And that's love for you LOL -
FloatingOpera7 — 14 years ago(May 16, 2011 08:47 PM)
Ok then I'll keep my point short. Everyone keeps saying that Valmont "finally found love" after a life of debauchery but I don't buy it. He did not find love. He never knew what love was in his whole life. If he did love Trouvel, he wouldn't have dumped her and cheated on her with many other women as he did.
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htbt — 14 years ago(May 23, 2011 06:57 PM)
@floatingopera, you can TOTALLY still love someone and still sleep with someone else. its beep up I know, but its a REALITY. I 'm a FEMALE and I know that its ALOT easier for men to separate the two (sex and love) and for some women it is as well, but men are better at separating it than women are.
sex sometimes has NOTHING to do with love, even the biggest players on earth fall truly in love once or twice, unfortunately it doesn't stop them from sleeping with other people. but even men who are "don juan's" do still fall in love.
sheesh, get a grip!! -
mixedmed — 14 years ago(May 25, 2011 09:08 PM)
Ok then I'll keep my point short. Everyone keeps saying that Valmont "finally found love" after a life of debauchery but I don't buy it. He did not find love. He never knew what love was in his whole life. If he did love Trouvel, he wouldn't have dumped her and cheated on her with many other women as he did.
Why would that be? Valmont spent his whole life seducing and sleeping with womenwhy would he instantly know what to do with it once he did find love? He pretty much fell back on what he knew.
As for why he dumped Tourvel, the Marquise pretty much spelled it out in that final scene before the duel. He fell in love with Tourvel but was ashamed to admit it because he was afraid of being laughed at behind his back. The Marquise plainly saw it and manipulated Valmont into dumping Tourvel because she was jealous and knew that he couldn't stand the possibility of people making fun of him because he the famous womanizer was "tamed" by sweet Madame Tourvel.
Yes, Valmont is a bastard, but that doesn't make him incapable of love. -
GaelicLass — 14 years ago(August 31, 2011 12:57 AM)
Well said KingAndrewHe also needs to learn when to break for a paragraph. The only thing he got right was that it was set in Louis XV time, the book was set during his reign and Marie Antoinette ordered a copy for herselfplain wrapper of course.
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magdalene_1024 — 14 years ago(July 07, 2011 07:23 PM)
I'm not so certain Valmont was truly in love with Madame de Tourvel, but I would say that after realizing that he'd been puppeteered by Merteuil, he gained a great deal of empathy for those he had manipulated.
I'd also suggest there was a dash of him realizing what might have been, if he had truly realized what he'd had with Tourvel, rather than thinking of her as just a goal to get his 'prize' from Merteuil.
I personally think it was his new-found compassion for the pain he'd caused others with a dose of regret that caused him to declare love for Tourvelhe realized at that point that while he couldn't undo everything, he could at least offer her some measure of peace. Outright love might be a bit of a stretch, though. -
blonde337 — 14 years ago(July 09, 2011 02:13 AM)
Whether Valmont was actually capable of love or not is an interesting topic. The way I see Valmont is that as a master manipulator he was always very much in control, his every action and expression was highly calculated. He'd also lived this way shamelessly to the point he was proud - his sexual conquests defined him as a man. During the game of seduction he plays with Madame de Tourvel he often feigns an overwhelming feeling of helplessness around her, the irony being eventually he does genuinely begin to feel this way and it astonishes him. He states to the Marquise de Merteuil that after making love to Tourvel he told her he loved her - which he had done many times previously but this time for a number of hours even he believed it to be true.
Basically the way I see it Valmont starts to lose some of his precious control, this vulnerability can be attributed to him 'falling in love'. This along with his inflated ego, fear of ridicule from peers and the Marquise de Merteuil tormenting and humiliating him by refusing to honour their agreement and accusing him of 'losing his touch' leads to his downfall. Don't forget he defines himself by his reputation, it is his self-worth stems from. To reinstate his sense of control and repair his damaged ego he ruins Madame de Tourvel only to find he has been effectively defeated. I believe Merteuil is correct when she says that his own vanity that has destroyed him and his 'love'.
By the end of the film and his life what we see in Valmont is shame. He forsook the love of a woman that gave herself to him entirely, not only that but he badly hurt her for the sake of his misdirected ego and he could not live with himself. I think Valmont was a man that did not know or believe in love, but found something in Tourvel he had never experienced before, real happiness and feelings he could only describe as love. So did he love her? Yes, in his own way. Was he still a bastard? Yes. -
dead_doll00 — 14 years ago(January 16, 2012 08:49 AM)
OP, Please don't take this as offense, but you seem to have a very naive, idealized version of love. Not to mention a very limited capacity to understand how people can feel and experience love. Human beings are not clones of each other. We do not all experience love in the same manner, the same intensity, under the same circumstances, and we certainly don't react to it as well as someone else might. Love is not an emotion that some people can accept lightly. It scares them, or makes them angry, or evokes some other emotion you will be utterly alien to because you simply don't understand any one particular person. To assume you know how anyone truly feels inside is a false assumption, because you don't.
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DasMaedchen84 — 12 years ago(April 25, 2013 07:16 PM)
^This. Love is different for everyone. People are also capable of changing if they choose to. I also do know for a fact it is possible for someone, male or female, to love one person and sleep with another person. This seems to be easier for men, generally, but it is very possible. Sex, love, and romance do not always go together.
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FelixtheCat34 — 9 years ago(October 27, 2016 05:47 PM)
I actually agree with the OP, I don't think that Valmont was truly in love with her. Maybe he loved her in a way, but I think what he actually felt, for the first time in his life, was guilt. He felt guilty and ashamed at the way he had used her.
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!!!deleted!!! (23568926) — 9 years ago(January 02, 2017 03:29 PM)
Valmont is a complex man, who can't be pinned down under categories or moralizing. Enter into his mind a bit and see what a cataclysmic effect Madame de Tourvel had on him, how it freaked him out, how he tried to fight it, was left with devastation and died. It's a moving, complex tragedy; don't judge it.