FRANCESCONIANA -- and Colin Firth

Speranza

Valmont: New Incarnation Of 'Liaisons Dangereuses'

LEAD:

Cheese in the marketplace could apparently be bought wrapped in fresh leaves.

And in the boxes at the opera house, there were curtains made of netting.

Aside from these and a few other comparably cogent details of life in late-18th-century France, Forman's ''Valmont'' contributes virtually nothing to the body of information surrounding ''Les Liaisons Dangereuses,'' the stunningly malevolent, ingeniously multi-faceted novel upon which one hit play and one much better recent film have already been based.

The appearance of Forman's film, which is to Stephen Frears's ''Dangerous Liaisons'' roughly what Lana Turner's ''Gone With the Wind'' screen test was to Vivien Leigh's, inevitably raises certain questions.

Why, when it was apparent that two very similar interpretations of the same material were headed for the screen, did no one change course?

Does the appearance of two elaborate film versions of this story really indicate, as Forman says in production notes for ''Valmont,'' something healthy about the film industry?

And would ''Valmont'' have looked like the stronger of the two if it had had the advantage of appearing first?

That last answer, at least, is very clear: No.

Bad timing is the least of this film's problems.

''Valmont'' is so much broader and busier than ''Dangerous Liaisons,'' what with Forman's penchant for introducing jugglers and musicians and muddy, carousing peasants whenever possible, that from afar it looks like the bigger of the two films.

In fact, it's much less far-reaching than ''Dangerous Liaisons,'' because the story's bite has virtually disappeared.

The arch, brittle bitchiness of this drama's jaded aristocrats, with their delight in plotting amorous intrigues as if they were military campaigns, is remarkably absent here, and so is the sexiness that gives the story's many seductions their sting.

When one character in Forman's film complains of amorous exhaustion, it's impossible to believe he's talking of anything libidinous.

He might just as well be tired from lighting all the candles on the set.

The empty clutter of ''Valmont'' and the occasional taste for oafish humor - those who enjoy eye-popping and jaw-dropping will not be disappointed - recall Forman's ''Amadeus,'' and so does the casting.

Forman, who put Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham in that film and Treat Williams in ''Hair,'' isn't apt to choose subtly appealing actors when more demonstrative types will do.

So a number of the performances here compare less than favorably with those of ''Dangerous Liaisons,'' particularly that of Annette Bening as Mme. de Merteuil, the sexual strategist played with such wicked intensity by Glenn Close.

Bening's smoothly overripe delivery of every line exemplifies this film's troubling habits of trivializing its characters and playing to the bleacher seats.

The other actresses in the cast, Sian Phillips as the scheming mother Mme. de Volanges and Fabia Drake as the title character's sharp-eyed aunt, have a quiet dignity that the film otherwise lacks.

And Meg Tilly, passionately earnest as the virtuous wife played earlier by Michelle Pfeiffer, is gently touching at times.

But Jean-Claude Carriere's screen play rips the foundation from the story by dispensing with the wife's religious piety, the quality that made her so tempting a target for the jaded seducer of the title.

Valmont himself, played here by Colin Firth as a tamer and more reasonable figure than John Malkovich's electrifyingly impudent sexual predator, is so much milder than the women of the story that the film's title sounds like a mistake.

For every necessary touch that ''Valmont'' has reduced or dispensed with (the climactic duel scene, for instance), there is another, less vital moment that has been expanded.

Where ''Dangerous Liaisons'' began with the news that the convent girl Cecilia (Uma Thurman) had returned to her mother, ''Valmont'' actually shows Cecilia (Fairuza Balk) being released.

The cumulative effect of this padding is a troubling lack of focus, in a film that risks being badly overcomplicated anyhow.

The editing that weaves the story's many strands together is much too conspicuously abrupt.

Also notable in the cast, though not necessarily for the right reasons, are Balk, who makes the  Cecilia as irritatingly wide-eyed as Thurman made her alluring, and Henry Thomas, the star of ''E. T.,'' as the innocent man who is Cecilia's suitor.

Thomas, with the same serious, trusting expression he brought to that earlier role, tries dutifully to play a music teacher who's constantly tripping over his harp.

What he also conveys, perhaps unwittingly, is a lost, bewildered quality that is all too appropriate. Tame Rendezvous.

VALMONT, directed by Milos Forman; screenplay by Jean-Claude Carriere.

Freely adapted from the Choderlos de Laclos novel ''Les Liaisons Dangereuses''; director of photography, Miroslav Ondricek; edited by Alan Heim and Nena Danevic; music by Christopher Palmer; production designer, Pierre Guffroy; released by Orion Pictures Corporation. Running time: 134 minutes.

Valmont ... Colin Firth
 Mme. de Merteuil ... Annette Bening
 Mme. Tourvel ... Meg Tilly
 Cecile ... Fairuza Balk
 Mme. de Volanges ... Sian Phillips
 Mme. de Rosemonde ... Fabia Drake
 Gercourt ... Jeffrey Jones
 Danceny ... Henry Thomas
 Baron ... T. P. McKenna