REVIEWED - UNTOLD SCANDAL: UNTOLD Scandal, the fifth movie based on Les Liaisons Dangereuses, the epistolary 1792 novel by Choderlos de Laclos, demonstrates how well a compelling story withstands repeated telling without ever losing its fascination, and how adaptable it is to different contexts and cultures.
Christopher Hampton turned it into a play before scripting the splendidly acted 1988 film version, Dangerous Liaisons, which overshadowed Milos Forman's rival version, Valmont. In 1959, Roger Vadim reworked it in a modern French setting, and 40 years later, Roger Kumble artfully transposed it to a present-day US setting in Cruel Intentions. Now E J-Yong has retained the story's late 18th-century setting while moving it to a specific Korean context in this stylish, sophisticated treatment.
The names have been changed yet again, but the personalities and motivation of the protagonists remains the same. The glacial, vindictive and impeccably groomed Lady Cho sets a challenge for her philandering cousin, Cho-won, a man so narcissistic that he paints erotic drawings of his own sexual exploits.
She asks him to deflower an innocent a girl before she becomes her husband's new concubine. In return, Lady Cho offers herself to her cousin as a reward. Having lusted after Lady Cho for years, Cho-wan readily accepts, but regarding the assignment as too easy, he sets himself the more difficult task of seducing the famously chaste young widow, Lady Sook, a devout Catholic.
Anyone familiar with this story of deceit, manipulation and emotional cruelty will anticipate the consequences, but the pleasure is all in the execution, as E J-Yong, adhering closely to the original narrative, brings it vividly to life within a different culture that is precisely defined.
His camera feasts on the mouth-watering food prepared for the protagonists, on their exquisitely beautiful costumes - and, in some cases, their naked bodies - on the elegant calligraphy of all the many letters exchanged between them, and on the ornate sets where this salutary tale is played out.
Simultaneously gorgeous and nasty, Untold Scandal is played with terrific conviction by actors portraying characters at extremes of the moral divide, and accompanied by a lush baroque score that doubles as homage to the story's origins.
