Avis Metacritic

Dangerous Liaisons isn't necessarily a work of art, but it's a guilty pleasure for sure.

Visual sumptuousness trumps the coldly erotic dastardliness of previous incarnations, but where this version feasts is on close-ups, with exchanges between pairs of eyes - the predatory versus the hesitant, the manipulatively comforting opposite the blindly vulnerable - that recall the silent era.

An interesting twist on a classic plot, Dangerous Liaisons is essentially a deluxe soap opera. But with its beautiful cast and gorgeous production design, it is still a highly enjoyable way to waste two hours.

Schadenfreude carries a delectable tang no matter the language, and as the history of Hollywood shows, stories about pretty people behaving badly remain reliably alluring.

Relocating Dangerous Liaisons, the 18th-century French erotic intrigue, to 1930s Shanghai is a bold move. And yet it's not especially surprising. In Chinese movies, that city in that decade frequently serves as shorthand for decadence.

Hur invests the period setting with an eye-popping opulence that's meant to highlight the elite decadence that came before the fall, but his Dangerous Liaisons isn't particularly sophisticated on a political or historical level.

Despite the abundant surface pleasures the vision of its milieu provides, its lack of insight or engagement makes this adaptation feel, ultimately, like a missed opportunity.

The least one should hope for from another adaptation of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's Dangerous Liaisons is savory, salacious trash, but nothing in Hur Jin-ho's tony new version approaches the dizzying depths of Sarah Michelle Gellar spelling out the conditions of her sex bet with Ryan Phillippe ("You can put it anywhere . . .") in 1999's "Cruel Intentions."

With its exotic setting and its beautiful cast, this Dangerous Liaisons is lovely rather than wicked.

Revenge may be a dish best served cold, as the novel suggested, but steamy adaptations simply can't be doled out lukewarm.