The Seduction Review 2025 Tv Show Series Cast Crew Online
A year prior, Isabelle (Anamaria Vartolomei) is toiling away at an orphanage, sneaking romantic moments with a young suitor, Beaucaillou (Vincent Lacoste). He writes her florid letters telling her how much he loves her, and finally asks her to marry him. She runs away, and the two of them exchange vows in front of two witnesses, including his aunt, Madame de Rosemonde (Diane Kruger).
After a night of passionate lovemaking, Isabelle finds out from Rosemonde the next day that Beaucaillou is really named Valmont, and the wedding was a sham; he just wanted to deflower her. Instead of being banished to a convent due to her impurity, though, Isabelle decides to go back to Rosemonde; she wants to be taught to use her beauty as a “weapon,” as Rosemonde says.
Rosemonde is a Libertine, but she’s feeling her age despite still being able to have threesomes with young courtesans, and she wants to see if Isabelle can play in this discreet but active part of Paris society. She wants her to seduce a particular target: The lecherous Gercourt (Lucas Bravo), the Prince of the Libertines. They will go to a sex party being thrown by Gercourt in Paris, and Isabella will pretend to be a virgin in order to seduce him. The reason why Rosemonde wants to do this are unclear, though.
A possible complication is that Valmont may have actually fallen for Isabelle. Despite his hatred of Gercourt, he plans on crashing the orgy in order to see Isabelle, take her initial anger at him and plead his case.
The Seduction is not from the mind of Les Liaisons Dangereuses author Choderlos de Laclos, but from how Delafon and Palud envisioned the beginnings of characters that are featured in the novel. The concentration is on Isabelle, who becomes known as the Marquise de Merteuil after marrying the Marquis de Merteuil (Jean-Pierre Lorit), and how she ended up going against the guidance of Rosemont to find her own way to sexual freedom.
The first episode is pretty clear about what Isabelle wants from Rosemonde, given that her choice is to either learn how to use her sexuality to her advantage or go to a convent for the rest of her life. But it’s unclear about why Rosemonde wants to mentor her. It could be that Rosemonde is feeling like she’s closer to the end of her years that she can do what she’s teaching Isabelle to do, and that she hopes to get recompense from Isabelle when she marries the Comte de Gercourt. Or it could just be that she sees her younger self in Isabelle.
But it seems that Isabelle goes her own way, as we see after she breaks away from Gercourt rather than lie about her virginity, and as we see her married to the marquis. So she definitely went up in status, but also has to have sex with an old man she has no attraction to.
How she goes from Rosemonde’s protege to Merteuil’s wife, all the while fending off Gercourt and bringing Valmont into her plan for financial and sexual freedom, should be an interesting story, even if some of the motivations of the characters aren’t quite clear after the first episode.
