Plenty to Like, Plenty to Dislike

An Exercise In Nonsense

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Certainly not the period piece one would think of when talking about, well, period pieces. It's very amazingly built. it has such a dark, ominous atmosphere that really sets it apart, that same atmosphere really building to what the film is trying to say and to the film's climax. The performances from the entire cast are exquisite. Kate Winslet shines in one of her lesser known roles, and it's so great to see Joaquin Phoenix, who even threatens and succeeds to steal the film away from his co-stars. What an immensely talented actor. Then, we have Geoffrey Rush who brings a lot of different shades and dynamics to his character in a way I'm not sure any just other could've done.

Writer and director Philip Kaufman is an American with a continental European art-house sensibilities when it comes to films. Yet he also has a populist touch which tends to make his films accessible to the many. He is after all along with George Lucas the co-creator of the character Indiana Jones and co-wrote the story Raiders of the Lost Ark.Quills is a bawdy and satirical romp. It is an adaptation of a stage play and features a fictionalised story of the Marquis De Sade. It is certainly not a bio-pic.The Marquis (Geoffrey Rush) here is a morally dubious and depraved character living in relative luxury at an insane asylum. The asylum is run by a liberal priest Abbe du Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix). The Marquis attacks his faith and celibacy by trying to put ideas in his head.When Napoleon tires of the Marquis sexual tomes he puts Dr Royer- Collard (Michael Caine) to deal with the Marquis. The doctor is a man who uses torture to cure his mental patients. It is clear he will use extreme methods on the Marquis. The doctor is a hypocrite of the highest order. He marries a young convent girl who he imprisons in a large house and has rough sex with her without any tenderness.Madeline (Kate Winslet) is a laundry girl who helps smuggles out the writing of the Marquis. She is being pursued by one of the asylum patients and also desired by du Coulmier. Yet although she enjoys the salacious tales of the Marquis she has not acted on them.Simone (Amelia Warner) the young wife of Dr Royer-Collard is the one person who acts on the tales of the Marquis by seducing and running off with the architect much to the fury of the doctor.Of course the film wants to make a point about free speech and censorship. It wants to give the middle finger to the conservative shock jocks in the USA who want to censor left, right and centre and then espouse free speech when it is convenient for them.However the Marquis de Sade as the standard bearer for freedom of speech, seriously? The real de Sade was a sadist. The word is named after him!The film rather loses its way in the latter part of the film where the screenplay becomes rather blunt. Madeline wants a final story relayed to her by the Marquis which drives some of the inmates mad, including the one who has in the past assaulted her and is the person who relays it to her.It is du Coulmier who takes extreme action against the Marquis when you know given the humiliations heaped on him by the Marquis and that his young wife betrayed him, it should had been the bad doctor.The film is well acted. However Rush who we only glance at briefly here and there at the opening part of the film maybe plays him too nice and sympathetic.I kept thinking how this film would have turned out if it got into the hands off a director such as Peter Greenaway, wayward he may be but it would had been a full on riot.

If you look at the cast names, as I did when the credits rolled, you may think you're in for a wonderful time. You're not. There is something about Western society in the past half-century or so: Our self-appointed social visionaries can't relinquish the silly idea that sex and more sex will release us from our backward hangups, usher in a new era of equality and peace, and maybe do the ironing, too. Despite all evidence to the contrary since the '60s, this conviction is advanced with energy and enthusiasm bordering on obsessive/compulsive disorder. The rest of us can only watch in bored disenchantment and growing impatience.This movie really has nothing to say. It makes a few gestures about free will clashing with priggish authoritarianism. There's some gas-bagging about importance of ahhht and ahhhtists. Some women are stripped bare by a director who evidently feels he has something to say. ...And ...we watch in bored disenchantment and growing impatience. There's a scene about halfway in, set as theatrical production by asylum inmates under direction of the Marquis (Geoffrey Rush, in acting service above and beyond the call of duty). He's burdened with a thudding, anachronistic line about shocking his audience with... the truth or something. It would be fine burbled at some academia cocktail party; not so convincing a sentiment in 18th-century France. The scene is supposed to be deliriously funny and invigorating as the prudes have their nose rubbed in clumsily staged sex acts. It fails on both counts. This is the time to go out front for a cigarette, beer or mind-numbing narcotic, just to shake out the fake laughter banging in your head.Where's Peter Brook when we really need him? I give it three stars for great cinematography and art direction. Minus-two for storyline philosophy that should've been junked with all those old Hot Tuna albums.

This film is a valiant effort to tell a story about a profoundly contemptible human being. It features a fine performance from Geoffrey Rush and boatloads of provocative, controversial moments, but the movie founders on its failed efforts to makes excuses for the horrible nature of its main character.Set in an asylum during Napoleonic France, Quills tells the last bit of the life story of the Marquis De Sade (Geoffrey Rush), the legendarily perverse and deviant writer. He's been locked up in the asylum to try and contain his monstrous imagination, yet he continues to smuggle out new works of blasphemy and pornography with the help of a chamber maid named Madeleine (Kate Winslet). The head of the asylum, a priest named Coulmier (Joanquin Phoenix), is blissfully unaware of De Sade's continued writing until Napoleon himself sends the harsh and unbending Dr. Royer-Collard (Michael Caine) to put a stop to De Sade's activities. Royer-Collard presses hard on Coulmier to muzzle De Sade, which results in an increasingly desperate battle of wills between the holy man and the infamous smut-wallower.There are a lot of good things about Quills. It has a lot of sharply written dialog and compelling scenes performed by a talented cast. Geoffrey Rush is quite bold and charismatic as De Sade, but that is the character that the script crashes into and never quite gets around. The Marquis De Sade was, by pretty much any standard, a vile and contemptible human being. He's really not the equivalent of a modern-day pornographer because, not only did his writing dwell on grotesque violence as much as sexual depravity, but De Sade himself engaged in acts that would be considered awful crimes both in his day and ours.De Sade was something like a cultural terrorist and that's not much of an overstatement. If you're going to portray De Sade as some sort of anti-hero or a tragic figure, you need to provide some greater justification for his abominable behavior. His degeneracy needs to be in pursuit of a higher value like truth or freedom. As Quills presents him, De Sade is pretty much a degenerate for the sake of degeneracy. That makes it hard to feel any empathy for him and his situation, no matter how difficult and extreme that situation becomes. The story does suggest his obsession with perversion was a reaction to what De Sade saw during the Terror of the French Revolution. That's an excuse, though, not a justification.Seemingly to compensate for its inability to grapple with its main character, Quills offers up not one but two subplots. One is about the forbidden attraction between priest Coulmier and Madeleine, which does fold back into the struggle between Coulmier and De Sade. The other is about Royer-Collard and his young bride Simone (Amelia Wainer), which is fairly superfluous to the story. It could be completely removed from the film and nothing of importance would be lost. Neither subplot stands on its own and it feels like they were woven into the script because writer Doug Wright didn't know what else he could do with his main character.There's a moderate amount of profanity, nudity and other things of a prurient nature in this film, though not to the excessive amounts that would do justice to the Marquis De Sade. This movie is also, in almost all respects, a well-executed bit of filmmaking. If you go into it thinking already believing there's something worthwhile about De Sade and his lifestyle, you'll probably enjoy Quills. If you're mostly ignorant or have a negative view of the Marquis, you won't find anything here that will enlighten or change your mind.