Cruel Intentions

Sarah Michelle Gellar was at the height of her Buffy the Vampire Slayer fame when she took on the juicy villain role in Cruel Intentions, a trashy pre-millennial update of Dangerous Liaisons moved from the Paris opera to the world of New York prep schools. As Kathryn Merteuil, Gellar flirts shamelessly with her bad boy stepbrother (Ryan Phillippe) and hides her drugs in a cross necklace, toying with awkward Selma Blair while trying to destroy Reese Witherspoon. (I forgot until just now that Phillippe and Witherspoon actually got married a few months after this came out; they now have a nineteen-year old daughter.) The film is just as shameless as its characters, stealing jokes and plot points from other literary remakes of the era: a Tony Curtis joke from Clueless, a Cardigans song from Romeo & Juliet… The limited return to theaters marks the movie’s 20th anniversary.