Cruel Intentions centers on stepbrothers Kathryn (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Sebastian (Ryan Phillippe). They enjoy the luxuries of New York City financed by their ever-absent parents. While Sebastian enjoys his carefree life as a womanizer, Kathryn sells herself as the dutiful head girl at her elite school. However, behind her tame facade lurk abysses – which also leads her to offer her stepbrother a treacherous wager:
Sebastian must seduce the good star student Annette Hargrove (Reese Witherspoon) so that Kathryn can take revenge on her ex-boyfriend. Sebastian agrees to the deal and sacrifices his black Jaguar as a wager in hopes of finally getting into bed with his stepsister. After Sebastian gets to know Annette better and better, feelings get in the way of the game. Everyone involved soon becomes entangled in a web of intrigue…
A naughty pinnacle of ’90s cinema
Of course teen cinema has not died out yet, but around the turn of the millennium the genre experienced its absolute heyday. In 1999, “Eiskalte Engel” had to draw a kind of line under the classic teen film, in which it uses the aesthetics and narrative mechanisms of this subject, gradually subverting them in an increasingly caustic way.
Director Roger Kumble plays with marked cards from the start, because what we’re expecting here is a similar story to, say, Freddie Prinze Jr.’s “One Like None,” in which a hot playboy takes advantage of the best girl in school for a bet, only to find out that he has a much softer core than he initially wanted to assume. At first glance, “Ice Cold Angels” also uses this story, but goes much deeper.
For where the aforementioned “One like none” ends in a romantic way that calls for harmony and tells of the great love that will surely last forever, “Eiskalte Engel” gradually gives its audience more and more targeted punches in the stomachwhich you could only experience in this sharpness in the 80s classic “Heathers” starring Christian Slater and Winona Ryder.
Therefore, “Eiskalte Engel” can be seen as a deconstruction of the thriving teen cinema at the time. It ended up having a huge impact on the genre too, because if you look at the Netflix hit Elite, the best-selling adaptations of the After series (the first installment, After Passion, was also directed by Roger Kumble) or the hit HBO format “Euphoria”, then, in the unvarnished directness in dealing with the spitefulness of teenagers, one certainly recognizes the formative aftermath of “Eiscold Angels”.
“Ice Cold Angels” is also damn hot!
Plus, “Ice Cold Angels” still offers a lot of still pretty tempting show values. As an erotic movie, Roger Kumble’s grim teen reckoning has a lot going for it. With Ryan Phillippe, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Reese Witherspoon, three of the hottest stars of the Hollywood Dream Factory are honored here. It is correspondingly effective if Gellar and Philippe in particular show an unusually frivolous side.
Not only is a massage sequence at the beginning of the film legendary, in which Sarah Michelle Gellar does everything she can to drive Ryan Phillippe crazy (and the viewers too). Also unforgettable is the widely celebrated French kiss between Sarah and Michelle Gellar Selma Blair. Appropriately, it was subsequently parodied several times (most notably in the vulgar satirical “Not Another Teen Movie With Chris Evans”). “Ice Cold Angels” is not only surprisingly smart and formative, but also really sexy.
THE BEST CINEMA SERIES – PRESENTED BY MOVIE STARTS
“Eiskalte Engel” will be back in German cinemas on July 4, 2023.
As part of the “Best of Cinema” series, which is presented together with Kabel Eins, a great classic returns to the cinemas every month. As an official media partner, we at FILMSTARTS also keep you informed about upcoming cinema releases as part of “Best of Cinema”. Find out more on the Best of Cinema website. And if you want to know what highlights have been announced alongside “In the Rush of the Deep”, we recommend the following article: