The series “Sex Intentions” will appeal more to fans of “Gossip Girl” than to those of the film with Sarah Michelle Gellar

SERIES – Making something new out of something old. This is the incessant bet that streaming platforms are taking on by producing remakes, reboots and other prequels and sequels to successful stories. For his new series Sex Intentionsreleased on Thursday, November 21, Prime Video has chosen to (re)tackle an almost bottomless source of inspiration: Dangerous Liaisonsby the French writer Choderlos de Laclos.

Since the 1960s, screen adaptations of the 1782 epistolary novel have multiplied. The best known and most cult, remains to this day Sex Intentions (Cruel Intentions in English). By transposing the story of the Viscount de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil in a private high school in Manhattan in 1999, Roger Kumble’s film with Ryan Phillippe, Reese Witherspoon and Sarah Michelle Gellard has become iconic for an entire generation.

Twenty-five years later, the new eponymous series from Prime Video hopes to follow in its footsteps and do better than the television reboot of NBCwhich fell apart in 2016.

Ce Sex Intentions version 2024 is not quite a remake since the story does not take place in New York but at Manchester College, a prestigious university near Washington DC. Kathryn Merteuil is now called Caroline and is played by actress Sarah Catherine Hook . Sebastian Valmont became Lucien Belmont (Zac Burgess) and Annette Hargrove, the character of the young ingenue who revealed Reese Witherspoon to the general public, was renamed Annie Grover (Savannah Lee Smith).

After revelations about hazing which threaten the existing fraternities and sororities (the famous American “Greek life”), Caroline asks her half-brother Lucien to seduce Annie Grover, the daughter of the vice-president of the United States, so that She joins her sorority.

Nods to the 1999 film

The eight-episode series attempts to play on the nostalgia of the film and does not hide it. Roger Kumble and Neal H. Moritz, who produced the 1999 film, are both producers. And there are many winks. A resumption of Bitter Sweet Symphony on piano and violins is heard from the first six minutes. The Verve’s song became inseparable from the film for its grandiose final scene. Unsurprisingly, it also serves as the end credits of the series, even if the last scene does not have the same flavor.

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The pool scene from the 1999 film was, in its own way, recreated in the 2024 series.

Same story for the swimming pool scene, replayed between Lucien and Annie, which fails to recreate the alchemy of the original. Another reference, this time successful: Lucien Belmont drives the same black Jaguar as Sebastian Valmont, the price of his bet with his half-sister Caroline. And if it’s no longer the grandiose Queensboro Bridge in New York, he does indeed cross a bridge, hair in the wind, at the wheel of his collector’s car.

Caroline Merteuil wears exactly the same silver rosary as Kathryn in the 1999 film, and just like the latter, she hides her drugs there in broad daylight. Sarah Catherine Hook is also convincing in reprising the acerbic role of Sarah Michelle Gellar, sometimes with the same lines (“I don’t fuck losers”among others).

The final nod to the film is perhaps the least obvious. Actor Sean Patrick Thomas, who played Ronald Clifford in the 1999 film, is the only “old-timer” in the series’ cast. He no longer plays a young music tutor who falls in love with the innocent Cecile Caldwell (Selma Blair), but the older teacher Hank Chadwick, who hires a student as an assistant, a certain Cece Carroway (Sara Silva).

The “Sex Intentions” series aims to be different

Apart from these few references to the film, which will go unnoticed by young people, the series does not resemble it. The love triangle between Lucien, Caroline and Annie is less present, and the sexual tension between the actors is not as convincing as that between Ryan Phillips, Sarah Michelle Gellard and Reese Witherspoon, which made the film’s sulphurous reputation.

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Lucien Belmont may drive the same car as Sebastian Valmont, but the sexual tension between the actors does not match that of the 1999 film.

This version of Sex Intentions is, however, not stingy with sex scenes, and we can rejoice that a kiss between two women is almost a detail in 2024 (when the one between Reese Witherspoon and Selma Blair shook pop culture at the time). The real difference lies mainly in the importance given to the secondary characters and the intrigue around fraternities and sororities.

If we forget its model, the series has all the elements of good entertainment for teenagers: conventionally good-looking actors and actresses, a current soundtrack (lots of Olivia Rodrigo), and evenings of excess in a ultra-privileged world, questioned by outsiders. Sex Intentions will therefore perhaps appeal more to fans of Gossip Girl or to French people wanting to better understand American “Greek Life”. For those who wanted to rekindle the nostalgia of their first cinematic emotions, you will have to return.