Cruel Intentions still absolutely slaps 25 years later

A post about how a widely beloved film is still really good? Groundbreaking.

In a surprise to absolutely no one, Cruel Intentions is still great. But like, it’s so great lads. What might actually be a surprise is that it’s 25 years old. That’s an entire Sabrina Carpenter ago! Christ! That is not that me espresso, let me tell you.

I rewatched it recently and I knew I was going to have a good time and all but my God! They truly don’t make them like they used to! From the very first second this film has you by the throat, I mean, opening with Placebo’s Every Me and Every You? Iconic. Also I’ve just learned that it was released in France with the title Sexe Intentions. Lol!

Ryan Phillipe is such a smug little fucker and therefore does a great job as Sebastian Valmont, a complicated character as you can tell by what I typed in my Notes app while watching:

He does revenge porn to Tara Reid - bad! He’s rude to cops - actually yeah that’s fine!

The dialogue is absolutely fucking gas, with the exception of a few unfortunate f-word slurs, but the fact that they’re spoken by a gay character and by the people who are meant to be objectively awful does make them kinda ring true for the time. Also, the aforementioned gay character is a bitchy Joshua Jackson with a bleach job and a cute lil knitted sweater vest! Adore!

This film also clips along like you wouldn’t believe, even more than you might expect for a tight 97 minute runtime (director Roger Kumble, you absolute BEAUT). I was amazed to realise that the notorious Selma Blair-SMG kiss happens 23 minutes in, like woah, we’re here already? Okay, great! And soundtracked by Blur’s Coffee and TV, no less!

Speaking of Sarah Michelle Gellar, I vividly remember this being such a heel turn for her in the days of Buffy, and she does it so well. Kathryn Merteuil must have been a blast to play, fueled by spite (relatable!) with all that diabolical scheming and riding and her and Ryan Phillippe rubbing up against each other like a pair of cats in heat, but also they were step-siblings? As were Cher and Paul Rudd in Clueless. What in the VC Andrews was going on in Nineties teen cinema with step-siblings being horny for each other?

SMG has so many excellent moments in this film, her face when Selma Blair’s naive Cecile asks if she wants to have a sleepover made me honk with laughter and her furious tirade about how it’s fine for Sebastian to ride his way around Manhattan but she has to be “the Marcia fucking Brady of the Upper East Side” for anyone to treat her with any respect was and remains a very good fucking point!

More from my Notes app:

Costume designer nailed it so hard

And you know what, they did! No one is trendy but everyone is timeless! The main cast are all in tailored clothes or sundresses or preppy tennis gear, Kathryn is wafting around in corsets and gauzy sleeves, it’s silky this and satin that and jewel-toned everything, bras, bedsheets, walls, the whole shebang and everyone looks amazing.

There’s so much to enjoy in this film, I mean Christine Baranski is always a delight but particularly as Cecile’s mother, in what my extremely untrained fashion opinion looked like a version of Marge Simpson’s Chanel suit insisting she’s not racist.

“I got you off the streets and this is how you repay me?”

“Off the streets? I live at 59th and Park!”

The big finale ramps up with with Sean Patrick Thomas’s character confronting Sebastian with a commanding “Valmont!”, and I love how that one shot swoops around him, it’s giving duel, fighting for someone’s honour, pistols at dawn motherfucker, and I just think it’s very cool! The scene ends with Sebastian getting hit by a taxi, and maybe I just watch too many action films, because my immediate reaction?

Lol wtf that was not enough to kill a person

As much as I enjoy this film the one thing always annoyed me, both when I saw it first aged fifteen and now, was the big unveiling of what a sneaky bitch Kathryn is, via the distibution of now-dead Sebastian’s diary. I had never noticed this before, but when we see the pages that have been passed around, there’s a pretty glaring typo, which is extra funny given Sebastian’s erudite, psuedo-intellectual persona:

Sebastian you dumb bitch, you couldn’t spell the word friendship? What was that fancy private school even teaching these kids?! I have always wanted Kathryn to get away with everything, and also her entire school completely overreacts. Like, okay yes, she does coke, and are you try to tell me that she’s the only rich New York teen who does? Please! Her schoolmates are all such a bunch of narcs, doing their slow headshakes at her, get a life you losers! She never actually did anything worse than Sebastian did, in fact he was way worse (revenge porn ffs!!) but because he’s dead all is forgiven now? The ending really just proved Kathryn’s point and at least she can spell.

Anyway, it’s still great and you should watch it tonight.

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Parish notes:

• I went to see Challengers on a lil solo cinema trip a few weeks ago and LOVED IT. My god, it’s just so exciting, and I have absolutely zero interest in tennis. The chemistry between the three leads pops off so hard that I was never sure if they were about to kiss, fight, or burst into song. Genuinely each of those things felt as likely as the other at certain moments and the Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross soundtrack is so SEXY that I felt like a pervert watching it on my own. I liked this fuckin film so much I’ve spent the guts of €100 on a hoodie from an American website (the delivery charge was a killer) that has the New Rochelle Challenger branding on it. Turns out there’s nothing I love more than deep cut merch that costs me a fortune only for my mam to inevitably ask if it was a freebie because it looks like a promotional item.

• I am obsessed with the Young Hot Guys podcast. I never saw this coming tbh, because normally three male comedians chatting on a podcast with no solid format would be an instant no fuckin thanks from me. HOWEVER. I love these guys. They are my good time boys, my sweet cheeses, my close personal friends Shane, Tony and Killian. That last part is absolutely not true but who’s to say what’s a parasocial relationship and what isn’t, right? Right? (It 100% is. When a Riverrock ad comes on telly my default response is “ah, it’s my friend Tony!” Again, not actually the case.)

• TG4 recently showed the first season of Minx and oh my good god what a fucking great show. It’s so funny and enjoyable and because it’s set in the seventies, the outfits and hair are all GORGEOUS. There was a second series that I haven’t managed to track down yet and it’s since been cancelled in the usual Hollywood style of binning things that are actually good which is very annoying! However! The first season is a total blast, although it was slightly concerning for me to discover that Jake Johnson as a lightly sleazy seventies dude telling a woman “You’ve got a mouth on you,” in response to her being forthright was actually very hot. Very very hot.

• Got married in Vegas on April Fools Day. 10/10 recommend.