Valmont Incapable of Loving anyone..he's a real bastard

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I'm not so certain Valmont was truly in love with Madame de Tourvel, but I would say that after realizing that he'd been puppeteered by Merteuil, he gained a great deal of empathy for those he had manipulated.

I'd also suggest there was a dash of him realizing what might have been, if he had truly realized what he'd had with Tourvel, rather than thinking of her as just a goal to get his 'prize' from Merteuil.

I personally think it was his new-found compassion for the pain he'd caused others with a dose of regret that caused him to declare love for Tourvel--he realized at that point that while he couldn't undo everything, he could at least offer her some measure of peace. Outright love might be a bit of a stretch, though.

Whether Valmont was actually capable of love or not is an interesting topic. The way I see Valmont is that as a master manipulator he was always very much in control, his every action and expression was highly calculated. He'd also lived this way shamelessly to the point he was proud - his sexual conquests defined him as a man. During the game of seduction he plays with Madame de Tourvel he often feigns an overwhelming feeling of helplessness around her, the irony being eventually he does genuinely begin to feel this way and it astonishes him. He states to the Marquise de Merteuil that after making love to Tourvel he told her he loved her - which he had done many times previously but this time for a number of hours even he believed it to be true.

Basically the way I see it Valmont starts to lose some of his precious control, this vulnerability can be attributed to him 'falling in love'. This along with his inflated ego, fear of ridicule from peers and the Marquise de Merteuil tormenting and humiliating him by refusing to honour their agreement and accusing him of 'losing his touch' leads to his downfall. Don't forget he defines himself by his reputation, it is his self-worth stems from. To reinstate his sense of control and repair his damaged ego he ruins Madame de Tourvel only to find he has been effectively defeated. I believe Merteuil is correct when she says that his own vanity that has destroyed him and his 'love'.

By the end of the film and his life what we see in Valmont is shame. He forsook the love of a woman that gave herself to him entirely, not only that but he badly hurt her for the sake of his misdirected ego and he could not live with himself. I think Valmont was a man that did not know or believe in love, but found something in Tourvel he had never experienced before, real happiness and feelings he could only describe as love. So did he love her? Yes, in his own way. Was he still a bastard? Yes.

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OP, Please don't take this as offense, but you seem to have a very naive, idealized version of love. Not to mention a very limited capacity to understand how people can feel and experience love. Human beings are not clones of each other. We do not all experience love in the same manner, the same intensity, under the same circumstances, and we certainly don't react to it as well as someone else might. Love is not an emotion that some people can accept lightly. It scares them, or makes them angry, or evokes some other emotion you will be utterly alien to because you simply don't understand any one particular person. To assume you know how anyone truly feels inside is a false assumption, because you don't.

I actually agree with the OP, I don't think that Valmont was truly in love with her. Maybe he loved her in a way, but I think what he actually felt, for the first time in his life, was guilt. He felt guilty and ashamed at the way he had used her.