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Quills film review
QUILLS
Running time: 123 mins
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet, Joaquin Phoenix, Michael Caine, Billie Whitelaw, Patrick Malahide, Amelia Warner
Quills begins with the Marquis de Sade, the legendary French literary pornographer, peering from his cell window as a young woman in the courtyard below is beheaded, much to the delight of the gathered crowd. In calm voiceover, the woman describes how one person's pain is another person's pleasure. It's a sentiment that is both a credo for the marquis and a reflection on a film that for some might be enjoyable, but for others will prove less delightful.
Rather than focus on the specifics of the marquis' turbulent and controversial life, screenwriter Doug Wright, who adapted his own stage play, has chosen to use Sade's story as a parable to condemn artistic and moral persecution.
The marquis (Rush), driven by his wanton sexual writings, has been confined to the asylum of Charenton, run by the compassionate Abbe Coulmier (Phoenix), where he continues to smuggle out his illicit tales via the laundress Madeleine (Winslet). Although the French peasants voraciously devour his work, the emperor Napoleon is less enamoured and after hearing extracts from the bawdy vampire romance 'Justine', he dispatches the ruthless Dr Royer-Collard (Caine) to Charenton to curb the marquis' deviant proclivities.
The more nefarious the methods of therapy the Dr employs, including repeatedly dunking patients in ice-cold water, the more resolute the marquis becomes. Deprived of ink, he resorts to using his own blood. Deprived of visitors he relays his stories through a crack in his cell to his fellow inmates, whose afflictions make them appear more absurd than disturbed.
Director Philip Kaufman has imbued Quills with the same unbridled lust and extravagance his subject affords his writing. This lack of restraint results in an overwrought costume melodrama whose large performances expose their stage origins. Rush, in a wonderfully flamboyant performance, plays the marquis with a salacious exuberance, capturing his maniacal and deviant sense of glee, while Caine's able to convincingly underlay the cruel Royer-Collard with a resounding weakness.
As the authorities try to repress the marquis' corruptive work, his influence is felt in the conflicted morals of a French society rediscovering itself following the revolution. To those who criticised his work as blasphemous, Sade replies that God must be weak to be threatened by his writing. Although set nearly two hundred years ago, Quills deals with issues of censorship and repression that are equally relevant today.
Kaufman, who previously explored the darker aspects of sexuality and obsession in Henry And June and The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, has created a provocative film which celebrates desire and degradation in a manner that both arouses and appals. In so doing it allows its audience little respite from the depravity and mayhem that surrounded the marquis.
Its ending exonerates Sade, indicting the hypocrisy of those who tried to silence him. Not for the faint hearted or squeamish, Quills takes the life of a man destined to be remembered more for the expression his name inspired than his writing and offers him up not as a perverted lunatic, but as a victim of self-expression.
Although there is much to recommend Quills, particularly Rush's performance, it's also difficult to embrace. The characters seem more like caricatures, carved more for effect than authenticity. There is little subtlety with which to temper its more outlandish moments and its often farcical elements only seem to undermine its more serious intentions. But, in a time where few cinematic risks are taken, Quills should be applauded for its bravery.
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