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- "Quills"
(Reviewed November 3, 2000)
- As a bit of an unrepentant filthmonger myself, I was hoping that this would be an edgy, lascivious, shocking, intellectually challenging movie about an 18th kindred spirit, the
Marquis
de Sade. Considering that director Philip Kaufman's previous attempt at filming erotic subject matter was the dreary and dismally dull "Henry and June," I should have known better.
"Quills" is dishonest, pretentious, tedious junk whose only paying audiences will be culture vultures and the raincoat brigade. The former will fall into two categories. Some will delude
themselves
into pretending that "Quills" is a masterpiece so as not to appear intellectually "unhip," if they are as insecure as certain members of the screening audience, who made it a point to laugh quite loudly at every
heavy-handed example of what was supposed to pass for writerly wit. Others will recognize this unconvincing, unsubtle, dimwitted dirge as nothing better than a bad costume melodrama full of declaiming
hams instead of actors, with a few crudely carved dildos thrown in for spice.
As for the raincoat brigade, let me save you guys a few bucks. Here is the full extent of the sex and nudity to be found in this preposterously timid tale about one of history's dirtiest scribes: A
fully-clothed instance of dry-humping; a fuzzy profile shot of Kate Winslet's left breast; several shots of Geoffrey Rush's droopy ass when he is photographed nude from behind; a long shot of full-frontal
Rush nudity in which his member looks like a golf ball resting in a black bird's nest (G.R., call your agent); a brief nude shot of a slutty laundress sandwiched between two naked guys; some remarkably
unattractive asylum inmates in various stages of undress during a few looney-bin background shots; and Rush cowering nude in a cell with his package hidden from view. Winslet does come through with a
nice topless scene toward the end (and may I say, she has a rather impressive rack), but you will be asleep by then, so it hardly counts.
Although most of "Quills"' characters are based on real people, almost everything they do is fictitious, as are many facts about them. The Abbe played by Joaquin Phoenix was actually a four-foot-tall
hunchbacked dwarf. The Marquis himself was fat. The water-dunking "calming chair" used by the doctor (Michael Caine) never existed. I don't know if the doctor's juicy jailbait bride (Amelia Warner) has
any
basis in reality. But she looks so good wiping her lips with the back of her hand as her head rises from a man's crotch that I'll give her a pass. (Attention Joe "Let's Censor Everything" Lieberman: This
movie
officially qualifies under US government guidelines as kiddie porn, because it features a girl under 18 in sexual situations. She is clothed, but rules is rules, right? Quick, organize another Senate
subcommittee
investigation, you anal-retentive idiot!)
In the most central plot point of "Quills," de Sade writes his scandalous novel "Justine" at the Charenton asylum and has laundress Winslet smuggle out the manuscript pages. The book's
publication
causes Napoleon himself to appoint nasty Dr. Royer-Collard to oversee the asylum and break de Sade's spirit.
In reality, de Sade was first incarcerated at Charenton from 1789 to 1790, after
serving a
few jail stints for crimes wholly unrelated to penning porn (poisoning, sodomy, that sort of thing). Although he wrote an early version of "Justine" while imprisoned in the Bastille, de Sade completed
"Justine" as a free man after leaving Charenton. It was published in 1791. TEN YEARS LATER, in 1801, he was arrested for writing it. He then was sent from prison to prison for the next two years,
arrived
back at Charenton in 1803, and resided there until his death in 1814. And get this: NONE of his published books were written after 1800. According to Brittanica.com, "He began work on an ambitious
10-volume novel (at Charenton), at least two volumes of which were written: Les Journées de Florbelle ou la nature dévoilée ("The Days of Florbelle or Nature Unveiled"). After his death his elder son
burned
these writings, together with other manuscripts."
In other words, the movie's entire premise--of laundress Winslet smuggling out de Sade manuscripts from Charenton, their subsequent publication, and the resulting notoriety those books bring to
de
Sade--is complete and utter bullshit.
Now, if there is one thing I hate (and believe me, there are quite a few), it is movies that want to have it both ways by co-opting a historical figure's name to sell tickets, but playing loosey-goosey with the
facts
of his life in a misguided effort to amp up the plot. If somebody is interesting and important enough to get the bio-pic treatment, doesn't that sort of imply that there just might be enough worthwhile stuff in
his
REAL life to make for a good movie, without giving some Hollywood stooge free rein to make stuff up?
But I'm saving the very worst thing about "Quills" for last. The most egregious thing about this two-hours-plus yawner, which supposedly champions the value of upholding the right to free
expression even for an irredeemable degenerate such as de Sade, is this: Passages from de Sade's works that are read aloud in "Quills" WERE NOT WRITTEN BY DE SADE, but by screenwriter Doug
Wright, in a weaselling and spineless attempt to ensure that this misbegotten film would get an "R" rating. Here are the integrity-free hack's own words of explanation, taken from an L.A. Times interview:
"I
think if you really read Sade's fiction you will find that he describes things in such a baroque and over-the-top fashion that they are biologically impossible. It becomes a phantasmagoric linguistic riff on
perversity that has no visual component. As such, I think we can only regard him as a satirist. To simply present him as the Hannibal Lecter of literature felt reductive to me. I thought the most subversive
thing
I could do was give him back his wicked wink, his sense of humor." (Gee, maybe Wright's next project will be a Pokemon version of Georges Bataille's "Story of the Eye.")
Somebody tell this
clown Wright that de Sade's work, whatever its merits, has managed to survive 200 years without some 20th-century crap artist giving it a "wink." God willing, Wright's work will be forgotten in
considerably
less time.
Back Row Grade: F
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