A handsome Belgian sailor on shore leave in the port of Brest, who is also a drug-smuggler and murderer, embarks upon a voyage of highly charged and violent homosexual self-discovery that will change him forever from the man he once was.
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Save your money for something good and enjoyable
Expected more
Brilliant and touching
It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.
QUERILLE is based on a novel by Genet.Combining the artistry of Fassbinder & Genet into one film is not easy.The film is a murder mystery,a many part love story (mostly male). Absract images bordering on being psychedelic.The acting by all is low key & excellent. The main known actors are Brad Davis (he died a few years later from the ravages of AIDS). He was an exceptional actor & is very well missed. We lost this year another actor who had them same superb acting chops. Heath Ledger.Jeanne Moreau gives another excellent performance as the bar Owner.Franco Nero plays the ship officer who is lusting after Querille (Brad Davis).All the other actors are equally excellent.There are a few sex scenes (male-male) they are done with erotic & are in no way offensive.The cinematography is quite abstract with beautiful images almost like paintings.This film is not for all tastes, but for Fassbinder fans it is a must.One more thing, I have viewed this a few times previously and finally understood the song that Jeane Moreau sings throughout the movieRatings: ***1/2 (out of 4) 91 points (out of 100 IMDb 8 (out of 10)
What an absolute peerless masterpiece this is. A glorious and sensual dream about subjectivity, objectification, image-making, masculinity and the disavowal from the male world of the abject female traits. But these traits cannot be disavowed, because all power needs fascination and fascination requires abjection.The film traces Querelle's journey from rigid singularity through an induction into a masculine world to an abject melting into the arms of the weakest of male figures. Seblon, excluded voyeur and viewer of Querelle's story is actually Querelle's final resting place - as we all finally rest before the images which dazzle us.An extremely ambiguous film, intricately bound within the image matrix it critiques - a weird and wonderful, fascinating world of mirrors, where all fall in love with their own idealised reflection & "each man kills the thing he loves." Certainly one of the most complex, provocative and seductive films of all time.
Well, i've been reading the comments about Fastbeenthere's film, and i think the deep religious character and mood of this moving film it's strangely overshadowed. So let's state it clear: Querelle, a pact with the devil, is mostly concerned with religion - from Latin RELIGARE: rebind -, in times when the churches are some kind of agents of the Control Flux - and sorry for these Borroughsian vocabulary -. The quest Querelle undertakes, is the same quest that we found in the poems by San Juan of the Cruz, or in the desert exile of Simon Stilytes, or in Siddharta's long journey... But in Querelle's case there's something more, something inhuman, because this angel-man is forced to develop an absolutely new series of values - Nietzsche -. All these themes are already in Genet works, and also, as an example, in Yikuo Mishima's works: Descensus ad Inferos as a form to rich the realms of heaven. So this devil which Querelle approaches is nothing but an outcast god - and gods are only gods if they are outcasts -, the only possible god for the rejected, for those confined at the end of the world - let's remember here the fight between Querelle and his brother, Robert, and we'll see that the road where this fight occurs takes to nowhere, well, yes, it takes to a dying sun, to the vacuum, the void, the infinite falling -. Concerning the queerness of the film, i would say that this is something really complex: again, the sexual scene between Querelle and Nono has a sacramental mood, and ritual characteristics - as the assassination of the sailor by Querelle - which make of this scene something else: not only an exposition of human, maybe depraved, desires, but of a desire to reach the unreachable: god or devil, never mind. In this scene, Querelle is baptized, and Dodo, the black monster, plays the role of John the Baptist. All is rebound to religion, even the music, and the "nomansland's" aspects of the xerography in this crazy and beautiful film.
You know that saying about bad movies being train wrecks? Well, this isn't just a train wreck...this is the Godzilla sequel to the mother of all train wrecks.Ohhhhhh, this film plays like an improv sketch of an art-house film written by lobotomised baboons. Or an unfunny gay-porn version of Barbarella written by homophobes.Unwatchable. Really. And orange. With half-naked oiled-up sailors and enormous phallic mooring posts.What on earth Franco Nero and Jeanne Moreau thought they were doing agreeing to take part in this septic tank of a film is quite beyond me.Truly, the worst movie I have ever tried to watch. I suspect I won't try the book either!