Annette Bening’s portrayal of the Marquise de Merteuil in Miloš Forman’s Valmont (1989) remains one of the most intriguing, yet widely overlooked, period-drama performances of the late 1980s. Stepping into the role of Choderlos de Laclos’s master manipulator just as her Hollywood career was taking off, Bening brought a distinct energy to the set that contrasted sharply with Glenn Close’s fiercely cold, razor-sharp interpretation in Dangerous Liaisons just a year prior.
The behind-the-scenes reality of Valmont was defined by a classic Hollywood “production race.” Miloš Forman and director Stephen Frears were adapting the same 1782 epistolary novel (Les Liaisons dangereuses) at the exact same time. Frears’s version hit theaters first in late 1988, capturing the cultural zeitgeist, critical acclaim, and multiple Academy Awards. When Valmont arrived in late 1989, it was inevitably compared to its predecessor, causing Bening’s brilliant performance to be unjustly obscured.
Forman’s direction and Jean-Claude Carrière’s screenplay leaned away from outright melodrama and toward a lighter, colder, and more structural look at 18th-century French aristocracy. On set, Bening channeled this by infusing Merteuil with a deceptive warmth. She played Merteuil not as an overtly calculating villain, but with an air of sweet, radiant femininity and bright-eyed charm. Her malice was buried under a mask of superficial innocence, making her sudden shifts into ruthless strategic planning feel all the more jarring.
On set, Bening and a young Colin Firth (playing Valmont) established a playful, competitive rapport. Rather than portraying two bitter, aging sociopaths, they played the characters like brilliant, bored children playing a high-stakes game of emotional chess. Theodor Pištěk’s lavish, pastel-hued costume design was heavily utilized by Bening. She used the heavy silks, elaborate corsetry, and expansive wigs of the Rococo era to emphasize Merteuil’s confinement within societal rules, and how she used that very confinement to manipulate the men around her.
Though Valmont underperformed at the box office, Bening’s magnetic performance caught the eye of director Stephen Frears—ironically, the director of the rival Dangerous Liaisons. Impressed by her range, he immediately cast her as the grifter Myra Langtry in The Grifters (1990), which earned Bening her first Oscar nomination and launched her into permanent Hollywood stardom.
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