Strange Moments in Solid Movies: Prefaced Insanity and Keanu Reeves and Uma Thurman Make Beautiful Music Together in Dangerous Liaisons

First things first: a self-indulgent, rambling preface.

I love movies, especially good, solid movies that work cohesively. I watch movies a lot, hoping that they will all accomplish what they set out to do (or, rather, what I think each is trying to do). Of course, every movie cannot be all-time success, because for there to be a good, there has to be a bad, and vice versa; it’s just how it works out. But when I see a solid movie, I take particular pleasure in not just how it works overall–in a well-made, impressive fashion–but how each part adds up to its collective impressive functionality. And when you watch movies a lot, you tend to become more aware of how specific moments, scenes, even sequences function within the stories being told. Ostensibly, these moments are all included in the final work for a reason–and I don’t think that it’s a stretch to say that the inclusions were made in an attempt to better it in an overall way, be they by simple character clarifications or complex expansions of the story’s universe.

However, there are times when something exists within the context of the finalized film that leaves me baffled, put-off, or highly amused by how different it is from the rest of the picture. These moments can be a strange blip on the radar of the movie’s greatness like some UFO that comes and goes, or it could be an extended portion of the film that is at odds with everything else, leaving the movie with an interesting interrelationship with the work’s other “working” parts. These are moments–varying from good to bad, detrimental to enlightening–that I find fascinating.

I know this description so far may seem too mechanical and dry for some, but that’s just how I see it. However, that is not what I intend for this weekly column (and my first entry into it should cue you in on that). Strange Moments in Solid Movies (SMSM, for short), as I will call it, is a way of getting at these moments and embracing them. That doesn’t mean flat-out liking them, but pointing them out and seeing what they are doing is, at the very least, an act of acknowledgement, a tip of the cap to their existence. Because the type of moment that will be included here will be constantly changing (in length, tone, style, genre, purpose, etc.), I will try to do the same: remain in flux with this, meandering here and there to cover the strange moments that roam within the good movies in film history.  So, let’s start after the strange.

Keanu Reeves and Uma Thurman Make Beautiful Music Together In Dangerous Liaison

Stephen Frear’s Dangerous Liaisons is a damn fine movie. The directing is subtle yet elegant, the script is biting and wonderfully devilish, and the acting is very strong across the board. Well, almost across the board. Though I wouldn’t go so far as to say that he is awful in the movie (though some certainly have), I will say that Keanu Reeves is out of his element here. Playing the part of Le Chavalier Raphael Danceny, a young music instructor to Uma Thurman’s Cecile de Volanges, Reeves is a strange fit, in both his period getup and (classical) instruction, and this moment in the movie is   his strangest–and funniest. Every time I see the movie, I cannot keep a straight face during this part. It’s just too much.   Here it is:

The movie does have some (intentionally) funny and clever parts, but I wouldn’t chalk this moment up as one of them; I would say that it is a moment that got away. They probably wanted to show an instance of young love, when two lovebirds playfully sing to each other, but it ended up being almost a parody. Now, without question, such idealistic love would sicken the cynical main characters, Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil (Glenn Close) and Vicomte Sébastien de Valmont (John Malkovich), so perhaps it works subversively coming from that perspective–a perspective that I probably agree with since I find the moment so funny–but I ultimately don’t think that’s the case here. If it were, it would enhance the movie. And though it certainly makes the movie funnier to me, to say that it makes the movie better would be going to far.

Or, maybe I am over thinking this, as I am wont to do (and what probably every other SMSM write-up will reveal). Perhaps it is a tiny moment in a good movie that could just be funny because it involves Keanu Reeves and Uma Thurman’s dubbed singing and goofy acting. Who knows?

Regardless, to me, it’s one of the many strange moments in solid movies.