Main Cast: Brad Davis, Franco Nero, Jeanne Moreau, Laurent Malet, Hanno Pöschl
Release Year: 1982
Country: WG/FR
Run Time: 120 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
A sailor learns to take, and give, it like a man in this surrealistic adaptation of writer and thief Jean Genet's novel Querelle de Brest by avant-garde German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In a colorful brothel in the port of Brest, proprietor Nono (Gunther Kaufmann) is known for wagering with his customers. Win a throw of the dice, and they get to make love with his wife, Lysiane (Jeanne Moreau); lose, and they must take it from behind by Nono himself. One day, Lysiane reads the tarot for her lover, Robert (Hanno Poschl), and learns in the cards of his intense passion for his brother, Querelle (Brad Davis). Querelle himself soon arrives, and the brothers enact a bizarre greeting halfway between a hug and a wrestling match. Querelle, it seems, is looking for partners in a drug deal; Robert points him in the right direction. An argument about the merits of sex between men soon leads Querelle to murder his fellow smuggler, Vic (Dieter Schidor). Back at the whorehouse, Querelle loses on purpose to Nono and finds he has a taste for passive gay sex. Meanwhile, fellow sailor Gil, who looks exactly like Querelle's brother (and is played by the same actor), murders one of his compatriots after the brute publicly impugns his manhood. Wanted by the police for both his own crime and Querelle's, Gil goes on the lam. Querelle soon crashes his hideout, and an intense bond develops between the two murderers -- a friendship that will lead Querelle to the greatest love, and the greatest treachery, of his life. Director Fassbinder was in the process of editing Querelle when he died of a drug overdose in June 1982. Gunther Kaufmann, who plays Nono, was Fassbinder's ex-lover; the film is dedicated to another former lover, El Hedi Ben Salem, the news of whose suicide had just reached the director. Critically derided even by many of Fassbinder's admirers, Querelle earned a Golden Raspberry award for Worst "Original" Song for "Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves," an Oscar Wilde poem set to music by Peer Raben and sung repeatedly by Jeanne Moreau. Moreau had previously starred in Mademoiselle, a Tony Richardson effort co-scripted by Genet. Look for Frank Ripploh, another pioneering German director, in a cameo. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Review
Like the Jean Genet novel from which it was faithfully adapted, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's swan song is a mannered, sometimes maddening affair whose complex symbolism and inflated rhetoric fly in the face of conventional storytelling. A mixture of guttersnipe philosophy, masculine ritual, and choreographed violence, the film oozes sexual tension and decadent glamour. But from the endless scenes of Jeanne Moreau singing a shrill cabaret ditty to the obtrusive narration and intertitle quotations, the film is often uncinematic in its translation of Genet's paean to self-actualization through treachery. Peer Raben's ominous electronic score is absolutely killer, as is the production design; the port town of Brest is brought to life on a stylized sound stage full of opulent interiors, cartoonish exteriors, and phallic set pieces. Yet the action moves so slowly, and the script is so talky, that the intricate wit and violent force of Genet's intellect often get lost. Brad Davis gives a granite-faced lead performance, his hard beauty ripe for the projected fantasies of the other characters (and the audience), while Moreau endures the considerable weight of Genet's unapologetic misogyny in a brave but ultimately masochistic turn. Supporting players such as Gunther Kaufmann, Hanno Poschl, and Franco Nero (the latter as Querelle's besotted lieutenant) also turn in compelling performances. Ultimately, though, this isn't an actors' film. It's a schematic amoral treatise dressed up in Tom of Finland drag -- a concept that works better on the written page than on celluloid. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
Günther Kaufmann - Nono; Burkhardt Driest - Mario; Harry Baer - Armenier; Isolde Barth; Roger Fritz - Marcellin; Y Sa Lo; Karl Scheydt; Volker Spengler; Karl-Heinz von Hassel; Rainer Werner Fassbinder; Wolf Gremm; Michael McLernon - Matrose; Frank Ripploh; Dieter Schidor - Vic; Robert van Ackeren; Vitus Zeplichal; Neil Bell - Theo; Rainer Will
Credit
Walter Richard - Art Director, Dieter Gackstetter - Choreography, Monika Jacobs - Costume Designer, Barbara Baum - Costume Designer, Harry Baer - First Assistant Director, Karin Viesel - First Assistant Director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder - Director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder - Editor, Juliane Lorenz - Editor, Franz Walsch - Editor, Michael McLernon - Executive Producer, Christian Zertz - Line Producer, Peer Raben - Composer (Music Score), Rolf Zehetbauer - Production Designer, Xaver Schwarzenberger - Cinematographer, Josef Vavra - Cinematographer, Dieter Schidor - Producer, Rolf Zehetbauer - Set Designer, Hartmut Eichgruen - Sound/Sound Designer, Vladimir Vizner - Sound/Sound Designer, Jean Genet - Screen Story, Burkhardt Driest - Screenwriter, Rainer Werner Fassbinder - Screenwriter
Querelle, a 1982 film directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, adapted from French author Jean Genet's 1947 novel Querelle de Brest. It marked Fassbinder's final film as a writer/director; it was posthumously released just months after the director died of a drug overdose in June 1982.
The plot centres on the handsome sailor Georges Querelle (Brad Davis), who is also a thief and murderer. When his ship, the Vengeur, arrives in Brest, he visits the Feria, a bar and brothel for sailors run by the madame Lysiane (Jeanne Moreau), whose lover Robert is Querelle's brother. Querelle has a passionate love/hate relationship with his brother; when they meet at La Feria, they embrace, but also punch one another slowly and repeatedly in the belly. Lysiane's husband Nono (Gunther Kaufmann) tends bar and manages La Feria's underhanded affairs with the assistance of his friend, the corrupt police captain Mario.
Querelle makes a deal to sell opium to Nono, and murders his accomplice Vic. After delivering the drugs, Querelle announces that he wants to sleep with Lysiane. He knows that this means he will have to throw dice with Nono, who, as Lysiane's husband, has the privilege of playing a game of chance with all of her prospective lovers. If Nono loses, the suitor is allowed to proceed with his affair. If the suitor loses, however, he must submit to anal sex with Nono first. "That way, I can say my wife only sleeps with assholes," Nono says. Querelle deliberately loses the game, allowing himself to be sodomized by Nono. When Nono gloats about Querelle's "loss" to Robert, who won his dice game, the brothers end up in a violent fight. Later, Querelle becomes Lysiane's lover, and also has sex with Mario.
Luckily for Querelle, a construction worker called Gil murders his coworker Theo, who had been harassing and sexually assaulting him. Gil is also considered to be the murderer of Vic. Gil hides from the police in an abandoned prison, and Roger, who is in love with Gil, establishes contact between Querelle and Gil in the hopes that Querelle can help Gil flee.
Querelle falls in love with Gil, who closely resembles his brother (they are played by the same actor). Gil returns his affections, but Querelle betrays Gil by tipping off the police. Querelle had cleverly arranged it so that his murder of Vic is also blamed on Gil.
In parallel there is a plot line concerning Querelle's superior, Lieutenant Seblon (Franco Nero), who is in love with Querelle, and constantly tries to prove his manliness to him. Seblon is aware that Querelle murdered Vic, but chooses to protect him. Near the end of the film, Seblon reveals his love and concern to a drunken Querelle, and they kiss and embrace before returning to Le Vengeur.
Fassbinder's adaptation features surreal sets that underscore the dreamlike quality and abstraction of the novel.
Filmed on a moodily lit soundstage, the look of the film was clearly influenced by the paintings of George Quaintance, whose campy paintings of barely dressed sailors and lion-tamers appeared in magazines such as Physique Pictorial. It also seems, with its shots of long, empty, walled cityscapes filmed in acid yellows and oranges, to be inspired by the Surrealist paintings of Giorgio de Chirico and Salvador Dalí.
Though Edmund White avers in his biography of Genet that the novel Querelle de Brest must be set prior to the city's bombing in World War II, Fassbinder's Querelle seems to be set in contemporary times. Several modern touches feature prominently in the film, including Seblon's tape recorder, his art books and even an arcade game in a local bar.
The lyrics of the songs Jeanne Moreau sings in the film are taken from Oscar Wilde's poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol."
According to the book Criminal Desires, Genet, though aware of the film, declined to have anything to do with its production, claiming that he could no longer remember the novel's contents. He apparently never saw the finished product, allegedly saying he wouldn't go see it because smoking wasn't allowed in movie theaters.
Importance
The film was Fassbinder's final work and he considered it his most important movie. He died of heart failure resulting from a lethal interaction between sleeping pills and cocaine. shortly after its completion. The documentary The Wizard of Babylon partly chronicles the production of Querelle and includes the last footage taken of Fassbinder before his death.
The Coffee House (1970) ·The Niklashausen Journey (1970) ·Rio das Mortes (1971) ·Pioneers in Ingolstadt (1971) ·Eight Hours Are Not a Day (1972-73, series) ·Bremen Freedom (1973) ·Jail Bait (1973) ·World on a Wire (1973) ·Nora Helmer (1974) ·Martha (1974) ·Like a Bird on a Wire (1975) ·Fear of Fear (1975) ·I Only Want You to Love Me (1976) ·Women in New York (1977) ·The Stationmaster's Wife (1977) ·Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980, series)
Shorts
This Night (1965) ·The City Tramp (1966) ·The Little Chaos (1966)
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
