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Then there’s Witherspoon, who was reworked into the right Nineteen Fifties teenager in Pleasantville the 12 months earlier than. She’s the best of a healthful blonde (the blonde vs. brunette trope is alive and effectively in Merciless Intentions), intelligent, stunning and virginal.
Witherspoon was already in a relationship with Phillippe earlier than filming started – she would go on to marry him – and their chemistry was palpable, in a healthful, real love form of means (versus with Kathryn which was pure sexuality.)
Philippe was most likely greatest identified for I Know What You Did Final Summer season and was a reasonably bathroom customary coronary heart throb earlier than Merciless Intentions however he actually rose to the problem. Following within the footsteps of John Malkovich as Valmont was no imply feat. But Phillippe’s lip-smackingly scrumptious because the conceited womanizer tamed by Annette’s goodness who throws away the girl he loves for the sake of his popularity. It’s unfair, however he turns into the tragic hero by the tip, killed in a struggle orchestrated by Kathryn. He couldn’t have been allowed to dwell (Valmont is killed within the ebook too) however he has his (most likely undeserved) redemption, whereas Kathryn has misplaced every part. She is in the end punished by the 2 girls she has manipulated – Sebastian provides Annette his journal which particulars Kathryn’s machinations and drug use, and Cecile distributes copies throughout Kathryn’s eulogy at Sebastian’s funeral – her valuable popularity and standing is ruined. After all of the coercion and cruelty she has enacted, it’s in the end her humiliation of Sebastian that’s the nail in her coffin (so far as the movie’s emotional arc is anxious). When Sebastian lastly rejects Annette out of satisfaction and involves Kathryn for the spoils, she cuts him lifeless.
“You had been very a lot in love together with her. And also you’re nonetheless in love together with her. Nevertheless it amused me to make you ashamed of it. You gave up on the primary individual you ever beloved as a result of I threatened your popularity. Don’t you get it? You’re only a toy, Sebastian. Slightly toy I wish to play with. And now you’ve fully blown it together with her. I believe it’s the saddest factor I’ve ever heard,” she says. “So, I assume you’ve come right here to make preparations. However sadly, I don’t fuck losers.”
The unhappy factor is, she herself is humiliated. She rejects him not as a result of he’s a loser, however as a result of he rejected her. He was in love with Annette, and never Kathryn. Whether or not she ever beloved him is questionable however she definitely didn’t like being spurned. Hell hath no fury and so on.
Merciless video games get you nowhere, the movie says, as Annette drives off in Sebastian’s automobile, the one which was to be Kathryn’s. Good has triumphed over evil, Cecile has survived and might be with the music instructor she loves, Sebastian is lifeless and Kathryn ruined. Is that the ending we, the viewers, are rooting for? It most likely must be however didn’t we love being in Kathryn and Sebastian’s world? Merciless Intentions is greatest when it leans into its kinkiness and cruelty. It’s why the film holds up and stands out 25 years on.
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