Juego de Peligro is an adaptation of the 18th century novel Les Liaisons dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, the more famous version of which is the 1988 film Dangerous Liaisons. The original text is transposed to late 19th century Manila and reveals it as a time of decadence, one premised on a class structure bound to conservatism and gender roles, love and desire.
It is a world of appearances, where the elite speak of reputation and expectation even as they put these into question, knowingly and otherwise, behind closed doors. Where it is in the enclosed spaces – the home, the room – that the negotiations between man and woman take place, the outside space is navigated by the indio whose predisposition to curiosity and tsismis is used by the elite as tool for deception.
That this time was imagined to cradle this story of love, desire and deception, with the decadence of beautifully made clothes and properly coiffed hair, and a mass uprising that’s imminent, is this adaptation’s gift. (more…)