Dangerous Liasons 1.05 & 1.06., Three Musketeers
In which we find out what exactly happened between Camille and the Montrachets, and the era's most prominent historical personality gets a cameo.
Mind you, part of what happened to teenage Camille was guessable in 1.05 already as soon as Jacqueline de Montrachet told Valmont that Camille had tried to seduce her husband, i.e. that teenage servant!Camille had been raped by Monsieur de Montrachet and that Jacqueline hadn't believed her and chosen to blame her instead. I was not keen on yet another classic female character getting rape as a backstory, but firstly, servants being treated that way unfortunately is standard for the era (and alas not just the 18th century), and secondly, the narrative puts the emphasis on the betrayal Camille experienced from Madame (to whom she'd looked up and believed in until this point) rather than Monsieur, which makes sense and fits with Camille's growing cynicism about women as well as men and own growing ability to destroy people. Equally, it fits with Valmont's capacity for jealousy that in 1.05 when he hears Jacqueline de Montrachet's version and none from Camille that he immediately jumps to the conclusion that Camille has been in love with Monsieur de Montrachet all this time. His "am I Valmont pretending to be Lucien or Lucien pretending to be Valmont?" identity crisis where he's not sure whether his feelings for Jacqueline de Montrachet are faked any longer made me side-eye the show again because of the resemblance to the Tourvel plot, but even in 1.05 they tried to make it different by throwing in the backstory of child!Valmont traumatically losing his mother, and when in 1.06. he finds out the truth about what the Montrachets did, you can see how this would bury his remaning scruples to destroy people.
(Incidentally, as I said I had guessed the rape/victim blaming part in 1.05. already, but not the pregnancy/lost child part. Considering we're in a pastiche/prequel to a 18th century novel and Camille and the audience did not see the dead body, I fully expect that child to be alive and be revealed before the season is over in another identity. Given Camille's overall character, it's bound to be someone whom she'll unknowingly destroy as athe Marquise de Merteuil for dramatic irony.)
I continue to be pleased by the way the series gives its traditonal "Sidekick" characters their own emotional lives and agendas, i.e. in these two episodes, Victoire, after her various attempts to stop Camille's path to full time predator fail, drawing the consequences of not just leaving Camille but taking the remaining letters she herself stole to protect her friend with her. A lesser narrative would have just let her leave, but Victoire has a keen sense of responsibility and is probably the most self aware and honest to herself character in the series. As her friendship with Camille and the two women's unconditional support of each other has been a key relationship of the show, Camille referring to her as a servant for the first time was the prefect trigger (though not the long term cause) for Victoire to draw that line. I'm increasingly fond of stories where people standing up not just to their enemies but to their friends (without these friends being revealed as false friends, which Camille is not - she still loves Victoiire) when they see them doing something wrong is an important plot point.
Otoh, it wouldn't be any kind of Dangerous Liasons if scheming and counterscheming wasn't going on, so Camille in 1.05. outwitting her foes and reacting to the Marquis de Mertueil's having gotten his late wife's incriminating letter, upon which he throws Camille out (or thinks he can) by doubling down and first tricking Madame de Sevigne into breaking off her daughter's engagement with the Marquis by using (true) information against him, then blackmailing the Marquis into accepting her back not just as a ward but as his fiancee by giving him the information (from the treasure trove of Valmont's letters) about Sevigne's secret affair with the Queen was immensely enjoyable to watch, not least because of course the nobility as shown in this series has it coming. And yet the series also manages to not forget these people are human - not admirable ones, but still human beings, so 1.06. brings home that Madame de Sevigne's life is ruined now, and then gives us that great cameo of a masqued and heart broken Marie Antoinette running into Camille (at this point also heartbroken, though for different reasons) in the garden. That Camille, who has striven to climb the social ladder throughout the season, doesn't recognize the Queen but manages to impress here nonetheless by a sincere moment of sympathy and good advice (with neither woman knowing that Camille is one of the reasons for Marie Antoinette's current grief) was a neat touch. And possible foreshadowing. It didn't escape me Christopher Hampton is one of the show's producers. Now, in Dangerous Liasons, the novel, the Marquise de Merteuil in addition to getting exposed at the end falls victim to smallpox, thereby losing her beauty. ("Her face finally matched her soul.") In his first adaption, the theatre play, Hampton altered this so the Marquise does not fall sick, but Valmont's aunt Madame de Rosemond has the letters, i.e. exposure is possible, and the Marquise's defiant toast to the new year, 1789, the last line of the play, is followed by the sound of the falling guilliontine as the curtain falls. (Whereas Hampton's screenplay for Frears' movie at first wanted to put smallpox back in, but then Glenn Close told him she could play "her face mirrored her soul" in the final opera scene (after Merteuil has been exposed, as in the novel) without any sickness-ex-machina, as indeed she did.
Anyway, my point is, you cannot think of Marie Antoinette without thinking of her ultimate fate. In this version, Camille is not originally an aristocrat, but because she lives in a world where the aristocracy holds all the power and she's had the experience of what being powerless means, does everything to construct a new self where she is one and completley invulnerable (or so she believes) - but she's living in the end times before the French Revolution, which means by becoming an aristocrat, she is sealing her own fate.
Trivia observations:
- the big hunting scene in 1.05 is one of those elements where you can tell this is a British show again. Not that the French aristocracy didn't hunt (famously, Louis XVI's diary entry on Bastille Day, 1789, was about his hunting), but signalling aristocratic decadence and callousness towards life via showing them shoot helpless animals is very much an English media thing
- having Marie Antoinette having an affair with a woman (though not one of the two ladies who were her favourites and whom gossip had her having an affair with, the Princesse de Lamballe - look up her gruesome fate in the Revolution if you want to be triggered - and Gabrielle de Polignac, but a fictional character) is one of those storytelling choices that could have gone wrong, not least because it uses something her enemies said about her specifically to damage her, and while this show hardly advertises het relationships as healthy, see all the plots, there could have been a subtext of decadence = same sex relationships: which is why her cameo appearance was such a good counterbalance, as it contextualizes the relationship quite differently, as something which on Marie Antoinette's part had been sincerely felt and real, something that makes her sympathetic and human.
On a "adaptions of classic French novels" note: behold, yet another take on the Three Musketeers... but this one French! (Eva Green as Milady not withstanding.) The correct pronounciations of everyone's names alone will be worth it. Also, it seems we're getting two movies (Part I: D'Artagnan, Part II: Milady), so I assume we'll get more or less the actual Dumas plots (the business with the Queen's jewels in part I, the siege of La Rochelle and Buckingham's assassination in part II). I'm cautiously optimistic there will not be any silly Richelieu-wants-the-throne-for-himnself rubbish based on the trailer, and am looking forward to Eva Green as Milady and Vincent Cassel as Athos like you wouldn't believe. But: why on earth did everyone have to be in Rembrandt brown? This was in any sense of the word a colorful era, with the Musketeers uniforms being primarily a bright blue. Is this because of some consensus in the last 20 years that brown = historically authentic? Because it's really not.
Mind you, part of what happened to teenage Camille was guessable in 1.05 already as soon as Jacqueline de Montrachet told Valmont that Camille had tried to seduce her husband, i.e. that teenage servant!Camille had been raped by Monsieur de Montrachet and that Jacqueline hadn't believed her and chosen to blame her instead. I was not keen on yet another classic female character getting rape as a backstory, but firstly, servants being treated that way unfortunately is standard for the era (and alas not just the 18th century), and secondly, the narrative puts the emphasis on the betrayal Camille experienced from Madame (to whom she'd looked up and believed in until this point) rather than Monsieur, which makes sense and fits with Camille's growing cynicism about women as well as men and own growing ability to destroy people. Equally, it fits with Valmont's capacity for jealousy that in 1.05 when he hears Jacqueline de Montrachet's version and none from Camille that he immediately jumps to the conclusion that Camille has been in love with Monsieur de Montrachet all this time. His "am I Valmont pretending to be Lucien or Lucien pretending to be Valmont?" identity crisis where he's not sure whether his feelings for Jacqueline de Montrachet are faked any longer made me side-eye the show again because of the resemblance to the Tourvel plot, but even in 1.05 they tried to make it different by throwing in the backstory of child!Valmont traumatically losing his mother, and when in 1.06. he finds out the truth about what the Montrachets did, you can see how this would bury his remaning scruples to destroy people.
(Incidentally, as I said I had guessed the rape/victim blaming part in 1.05. already, but not the pregnancy/lost child part. Considering we're in a pastiche/prequel to a 18th century novel and Camille and the audience did not see the dead body, I fully expect that child to be alive and be revealed before the season is over in another identity. Given Camille's overall character, it's bound to be someone whom she'll unknowingly destroy as athe Marquise de Merteuil for dramatic irony.)
I continue to be pleased by the way the series gives its traditonal "Sidekick" characters their own emotional lives and agendas, i.e. in these two episodes, Victoire, after her various attempts to stop Camille's path to full time predator fail, drawing the consequences of not just leaving Camille but taking the remaining letters she herself stole to protect her friend with her. A lesser narrative would have just let her leave, but Victoire has a keen sense of responsibility and is probably the most self aware and honest to herself character in the series. As her friendship with Camille and the two women's unconditional support of each other has been a key relationship of the show, Camille referring to her as a servant for the first time was the prefect trigger (though not the long term cause) for Victoire to draw that line. I'm increasingly fond of stories where people standing up not just to their enemies but to their friends (without these friends being revealed as false friends, which Camille is not - she still loves Victoiire) when they see them doing something wrong is an important plot point.
Otoh, it wouldn't be any kind of Dangerous Liasons if scheming and counterscheming wasn't going on, so Camille in 1.05. outwitting her foes and reacting to the Marquis de Mertueil's having gotten his late wife's incriminating letter, upon which he throws Camille out (or thinks he can) by doubling down and first tricking Madame de Sevigne into breaking off her daughter's engagement with the Marquis by using (true) information against him, then blackmailing the Marquis into accepting her back not just as a ward but as his fiancee by giving him the information (from the treasure trove of Valmont's letters) about Sevigne's secret affair with the Queen was immensely enjoyable to watch, not least because of course the nobility as shown in this series has it coming. And yet the series also manages to not forget these people are human - not admirable ones, but still human beings, so 1.06. brings home that Madame de Sevigne's life is ruined now, and then gives us that great cameo of a masqued and heart broken Marie Antoinette running into Camille (at this point also heartbroken, though for different reasons) in the garden. That Camille, who has striven to climb the social ladder throughout the season, doesn't recognize the Queen but manages to impress here nonetheless by a sincere moment of sympathy and good advice (with neither woman knowing that Camille is one of the reasons for Marie Antoinette's current grief) was a neat touch. And possible foreshadowing. It didn't escape me Christopher Hampton is one of the show's producers. Now, in Dangerous Liasons, the novel, the Marquise de Merteuil in addition to getting exposed at the end falls victim to smallpox, thereby losing her beauty. ("Her face finally matched her soul.") In his first adaption, the theatre play, Hampton altered this so the Marquise does not fall sick, but Valmont's aunt Madame de Rosemond has the letters, i.e. exposure is possible, and the Marquise's defiant toast to the new year, 1789, the last line of the play, is followed by the sound of the falling guilliontine as the curtain falls. (Whereas Hampton's screenplay for Frears' movie at first wanted to put smallpox back in, but then Glenn Close told him she could play "her face mirrored her soul" in the final opera scene (after Merteuil has been exposed, as in the novel) without any sickness-ex-machina, as indeed she did.
Anyway, my point is, you cannot think of Marie Antoinette without thinking of her ultimate fate. In this version, Camille is not originally an aristocrat, but because she lives in a world where the aristocracy holds all the power and she's had the experience of what being powerless means, does everything to construct a new self where she is one and completley invulnerable (or so she believes) - but she's living in the end times before the French Revolution, which means by becoming an aristocrat, she is sealing her own fate.
Trivia observations:
- the big hunting scene in 1.05 is one of those elements where you can tell this is a British show again. Not that the French aristocracy didn't hunt (famously, Louis XVI's diary entry on Bastille Day, 1789, was about his hunting), but signalling aristocratic decadence and callousness towards life via showing them shoot helpless animals is very much an English media thing
- having Marie Antoinette having an affair with a woman (though not one of the two ladies who were her favourites and whom gossip had her having an affair with, the Princesse de Lamballe - look up her gruesome fate in the Revolution if you want to be triggered - and Gabrielle de Polignac, but a fictional character) is one of those storytelling choices that could have gone wrong, not least because it uses something her enemies said about her specifically to damage her, and while this show hardly advertises het relationships as healthy, see all the plots, there could have been a subtext of decadence = same sex relationships: which is why her cameo appearance was such a good counterbalance, as it contextualizes the relationship quite differently, as something which on Marie Antoinette's part had been sincerely felt and real, something that makes her sympathetic and human.
On a "adaptions of classic French novels" note: behold, yet another take on the Three Musketeers... but this one French! (Eva Green as Milady not withstanding.) The correct pronounciations of everyone's names alone will be worth it. Also, it seems we're getting two movies (Part I: D'Artagnan, Part II: Milady), so I assume we'll get more or less the actual Dumas plots (the business with the Queen's jewels in part I, the siege of La Rochelle and Buckingham's assassination in part II). I'm cautiously optimistic there will not be any silly Richelieu-wants-the-throne-for-himnself rubbish based on the trailer, and am looking forward to Eva Green as Milady and Vincent Cassel as Athos like you wouldn't believe. But: why on earth did everyone have to be in Rembrandt brown? This was in any sense of the word a colorful era, with the Musketeers uniforms being primarily a bright blue. Is this because of some consensus in the last 20 years that brown = historically authentic? Because it's really not.
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