Dangerous Liaisons

Dangerous Liaisons The World Should Be Afraid of Us Season 1 Episode 5 Editor’s Rating 5 stars * * * * * « Previous Next « Previous Episode Next Episode » Photo: Dusan Martincek/Starz Entertainment
There was more sexy intrigue this week. I expect sexy intrigue in every episode of this show, but there are some really good moments of people speaking half an inch away from each other’s faces with a lot of subtextual yearning (some of its canon, some of it in my head). Certain mysteries are solved, but others endure! WTF happened at Jacqueline de Montrachet’s home? Let us go over the week’s events.
After a narrow escape from the marquis-owned Labyrinth, Camille stays over at Valmont’s (with no funny business happening, it makes clear). Tonight is the marquis’s, a.k.a. Jean’s, engagement party. He’s moving forward with marrying the very nice and terrible singer, Sevigny’s daughter Emilie! I love Emilie. She’s so well-intentioned, and no one’s mean to her about her horrible singing. The party is being held at Sevigny’s home, the Chateau de Rambouillet, just outside Paris. Camille is going to be there, despite not having an invitation. She has a plan. Does it involve blackmail? Of course, it does; what else do you think we’re doing here? Certainly not watching Camille have a falling out with her former paramour Jacqueline, because I cannot have nice things.
The party is in full swing as the guests play Blind Man’s Bluff, a great game for accidentally grabbing boobs (note: this is only fun if all boobs consent). Camille walks in, and the marquis grabs her around the waist and guesses she’s his future wife. False! Emilie is over in the corner, flirting with her presumably impoverished music teacher, who clearly is not teaching her music during their time together. Camille is all business and very succinctly tells the marquis she doesn’t need the rubbish letter he burned up because now she knows about the Labyrinth. If he doesn’t give her a lot of money and the protection of his name, she’s going to tell all these people.
The marquis is surprisingly agreeable to this but tells her it will take a day to get his lawyer and the money. Don’t trust him, Camille! But also, what recourse does she have? It’s not like she can sit in a forest outside eighteenth-century Paris and google tips on how to make sure your blackmail mark pays up. Since she’s staying overnight, the marquis tells Sevigny to find Camille (and Victoire!) a room.
We get to hear Emilie sing again, yeeeeeessssss. It’s the worst. Everyone claps. I love it. Then, to prove how extremely high up in the social hierarchy all these people are, the Princesse de Lamballe shows up with a tiara (diadem? I don’t know, guys, we’re going with tiara) for Emilie from Marie Antoinette to show the queen’s approval. The Princesse de Lamballe was historically v. tight with the queen and was murdered in the revolution a few years after this, but here she is alive and well and handing out tiaras! So that’s fun. I enjoy how this show trots out some historical figures of the period in question but then pulls in names from surrounding centuries, so you’re like, “Wait … that name sounds familiar.” Like Sevigny! Who, as previously mentioned, is presumably based on the seventeenth-century Madame de Sévigné, definitely not a contemporary of Marie Antoinette’s.
Speaking of Sevigny, I’m on the side of older, slightly evil women like 90 percent of the time anyway, but if you were a French countess in this time and your daughter came to you and said, Mom, I know you want me to marry the marquis who can set me up for life, but I am really sure I’m in love with my music teacher, wouldn’t you at least try to dissuade her from the latter?? What’s the plan, Emilie? That being said, Emilie deserves everything.
The Chevalier de Saint-Jacques (our opera composer!) has a side convo with Sevigny where he says the queen is sad not to be joining Sevigny, but she kissed the chevalier’s hand so Sevigny could kiss it, and they could … kiss that way? I am very embarrassed to say I did not pick up on what this meant and was very wow, look at those gals being pals. Sevigny sends back her love to “dear Marietta.” I missed that she said this the first time around, but it turns out to be extremely important that Camille overhears it!
Let’s pause the party and see what Valmont’s up to with Jacqueline. They’re giving alms! So, going to poor people’s houses and giving them money and stuff. While there, Valmont has an auditory flashback where he hears a boy shouting, and he abruptly leaves. Jacqueline follows, and they sit together in her carriage (SCANDAL), and after he mentions that it involves a painful memory, she talks about how getting a bucket of pig’s blood thrown on her really made her not want to leave the house. I mean. That’s pretty understandable, Jacqueline. But then, we get her version of The Camille Story. She dates it to five years ago and says Camille tried to take her husband and destroy her marriage, and when Camille failed, she cut her wrists in front of Jacqueline. Okay, so the motive Jacqueline is giving is that Camille wanted her husband? Ughhhh boooooooo. I know there’s more to the story (I assume he made advances she did not want), but that’s not the Sarah Waters–type twist I wanted, show. I know there’s some appeasement in that regard with Sevigny, but it’s not the same.
Our Valmont and Camille worlds collide as he travels to Rambouillet to speak with her. They meet in the summer house, where Camille immediately tells Valmont she loves him. What? Why! This is so weird! I know she’s been remembering Jacqueline’s husband, so maybe she’s just trying to escape how unpleasant that is, but damn. Valmont is not here for it, though, because now he thinks Jacqueline is the goddamn greatest, and if Camille upset her, he is really mad about it. He also, however, thinks Camille used him because her main goal is to get Jacqueline’s husband. Valmont pulls the ribbons off her wrists (dick move) to verify what Jacqueline told him. When Camille tells him he knows nothing, Valmont tells her he doesn’t want to know anymore. That is ALWAYS the wrong thing to say in fiction because the other party is always two seconds from completely explaining away the whole thing and making you feel much better.
Valmont goes back to Jacqueline and tells her that his memory from the other day was of his mother being murdered while she was giving alms. Geeeeeeeez. They hold hands and Valmont tells Jacqueline he wants her to know him. I know he says she makes him want to be actually good, but if he were manipulating her, this is exactly how you bond super quickly with people. You have to be vulnerable in an appropriate setting (a park bench), and then they can be vulnerable, and then you’re super tight. Sometimes. Other times it’s an overshare, and then it’s real awkward. But this is not one of those times! Jacqueline is into it.
He invites her over to his shitty apartment, and she’s so impressed with how modestly he lives (wow). When Valmont offers her coffee, she asks for wine, which is real “let’s just get down to it” energy. Jacqueline gives him a book her husband wrote on the soul (what?) and they rationalize why wanting to bone each other isn’t a sin. Then their faces get real close, and she says let us pray. OMG. When Valmont asks what they’re praying about, she says, “For the thoughts I have about you, and upon which we can never act, can we?” JACQUELINE. OMG. I refuse to believe you don’t know what you’re doing with that. Valmont’s prayer hands definitely graze her boobs, and then she turns and leaves. SEXY PRAYING. I knew it was possible but had never seen it done. Damn.
Wow, so much happened this week; I feel like we’ve only covered half of it. There’s a whole subplot where Camille conspires with the Vicomtesse de Valmont to end Emilie’s engagement so the Vicomtesse can go after the Marquis de Merteuil herself and then offer Camille protection because Camille doesn’t trust the marquis. The only useful thing from that temporary alliance is that the Vicomtesse discloses that Valmont slept with Sevigny.
But first!! The Hunting Scene. I am obsessed with The Hunting Scene. My tricorn hat is off to The Hunting Scene. This is a three-and-a-half-minute single-shot scene that is intensely choreographed, all outside in the forest, with excellent music underscoring it. The women are all wearing riding habits like Felicity the American Girl doll, and I love all of it. Ten out of ten to this scene for making you feel like you’re there, walking among the various groups, and hearing Sevigny sexily threaten Camille.
Because that happens! In this scene, after Camille has prompted Emilie to “follow your heart” (terrible advice here) and speak to her mother, Sevigny comes after Camille, ostensibly to teach her how to shoot. I would pay Sevigny to teach me how to shoot; I don’t care if she’s also telling me to get out of her house. Sevigny puts her arms around Camille and tells Camille not to unsettle her daughter, that she’s nicknamed Musket because she never misses, and that Camille better leave, or the next shot is her.
To solve the Sevigny problem and make the marquis available, Camille once more digs through Valmont’s letters, looking for one from Sevigny. She finds one in Sevigny’s handwriting signed “M” (for Musket). In the letter, Sevigny thanks Valmont for teaching her techniques that she tried with “her darling Marietta.” YES, MARIETTA. Sevigny is sexing the queen. This is like 98 percent not historically accurate (definitely not with Sevigny, since she didn’t exist then, but the rumors about Marie Antoinette’s sexual behavior seem to have been politically motivated). For the purposes of this show and my own happiness, however, I will take it.
Camille tells Sevigny she has to break off Emilie’s engagement or Camille will tell everyone about the letter, which is either sedition (if it’s a lie) or she’s made a cuckold of the king. I know Sevigny’s been pretty terrible to Camille, but wow. Okay. There are several things to think about here. Cheating on your spouse is bad, so her behavior is not great there. But then there’s the context of her time. Let’s say Sevigny is gay and in love with the queen. Or queer and would not cheat on her husband, but the queen wants her to, and look at the power imbalance there. I’m just saying, I can see a lot of scenarios where I feel extremely bad about Sevigny being cornered, especially since Camille is threatening to out her, a concept that did not exist then but still sucks.
And then, after Sevigny does what Camille asks, Camille strikes a separate bargain with the marquis and still outs her. It’s horrible. Camille gives Sevigny’s letter to the marquis, who gives it to the Princesse de Lamballe in front of everyone. The princess tells her, “You fall by your own hand.” Ughhhhhhh I don’t like it. This episode is still five out of five because it has so many great elements, and it’s not like we’re supposed to think Camille is doing an amazing job here, but ugh, so upsetting.
Camille’s bargain with the marquis is that, instead of marrying Emilie, he marries her. There it is. We’re approaching her OG title as the Marquise de Merteuil. The marquis tells her if he is equal to the carnage she has wrought, the world should be afraid of them both.