You won't be disappointed!

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

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.

a must see movie to (re)discover the real sweet and human philosophy of le marquis de sade.the duo auteuil/jacquot builds the simplest and the finest image of should have be the true donatien alphonse françois de sade. DVD bonus provides multiple interesting point of view of the team interviews. direction by benoit jacquot is simple and historically and in context very sharp. It's more than a movie because it makes you understand the enormous paradox between the word "sadic" and one of our gentle , humanist , coherent , true, realist philosopher we ever had .

I saw this on Cinemoi, the satellite French movie channel.Some of us are familiar with the famous story of the notorious French aristocrat, imprisoned, in some comfort at a Château during the French Revolution. Familiar on both sides of the English Channel now, Daniel Auteille stars as the lecherous libertine and Marianne Dennicourt as the young girl, daughter of another imprisoned noble family who becomes secretly fascinated by him.Those that have read/seen other versions - the only one I have is Philip Kaufmann's "Quills", a Hollywood-tinged softly erotic character piece for both Geoffrey Rush and Kate Winslet as the leads I mention. Quills also had Michael Caine, Joaqaine Phoenix, and Billy Whitelaw, so quite a cast.As you might expect, director Benoit Jacquot gives us a historical drama, in comparison to Kaufman's heated and nicely sin-tinged one. They were made in the same year, 2000. Without a doubt, Sade would be the most accurate, if that's important to you.Sade is shot rather conventionally, is never in doubt that it's a period piece and so, feels authentic, but quite dry. Don't expect the humour, sex or theatrics of Quills and savour the story of this scandalous man, as he wrote lewd manuscripts and got them smuggled out to publishers via the young girl.Auteill takes a while to get going - too many real-life activities hinder the Marquis engaging with his young charge - when he does, he starts to show that sexually charismatic spell that he casts - the sort that all manipulating brainwashers seem to possess.Hardly a review exists and I cannot find an age rating for it. Explicitly it is quite tame until the last scene which would be rated as 18.If you enjoy authentic historical drama, especially French and are interested in the Sade, the man, rather than a sensationalised account of what he did, then this film may be for you. It wasn't really for me, but I can see its virtues.

As our republic turns to an Empire under another mad King George, it is interesting to see in another time the responses of power-mad people who are sex obsessed and repressed to a libertine. For the first time, I began to understand 'why Napoleon'? As we see the French aristocrats in their maggot-laden prison (evoking the maggot-laden aristocracy and their excesses?), we come to view the soon-to-be headless from another perspective. As far as I'm concerned, deSade is merely an excuse for showing us how it is to face death daily. These people because of their wealth could afford to pay to live in this 'asylum'. Most assuredly, seeing the headless, former friends of yours dumped into ditches outside your 'chateau' would drive you mad....knowing your own fate lay mere feet away. The guillotine, also erected nearby provided yet another view. In order to inject a little humor in what otherwise is unbearable (how many of you remembered the photographs at Auschwitz when you saw the ditches filled with the bodies?), we see the French peasants on burial detail throwing the heads from one to another. We are then told by a young man, obsessed with watching the daily parade of tumbrels to the burial ditches (formerly gardens-- growing vegetables that you watch uprooted....what pictorial analogies!!!) that "They are wedging the heads into the bodies." Scuse me for pulling a Henry James on you.Autiell is indeed magnificent. Having just seen "The Widow" where he plays a sheriff about to USE the visiting guillotine on a good man, I thought the role-reversal was a great perspective for him. As Sade, he too faces the blade: as Ropespierre, in his obsession to force belief in a diety on the French, is trying to execute de Sade as an example of a 'godless atheist'. (Can you be an atheist without being godless? Seeming redundancies fascinate me.) I could not hear this announcement without thinking of our clear disregard for the Constitutional separation of church and state in our 'under God' interruption of the nice cadences of the Pledge of Allegiance. I'm old enough to have learned the Pledge when it wasn't hampered with a reminder of our careless disregard of the Bill of Rights.Of course, there's a sex scene. Which raises the question, "Is it men who get turned on by violence?" To me, it was repulsive. Being introduced to sex by a gang bang would have made me frigid, I'm thinking. Yet, as Auteill tastefully points out to the young man whom he has just had whip him, "You're hard; that's good." Is that why men like violent movies? And is that why they can, with logic-tight compartments in place, cry out against movies with sex scenes while loving an Arnold Schwarzenburger 'kill-all with loud guns and lots of blood' fest? They have been sexually satiated with the violence, so need no 'cissy love-with-sex' scenes? The idea that adultery is worse than mass and/or state-sanctioned mass murder by my country-men still astounds me!! But maybe, this is a partial explanation.Sade is aging, and it would have been more convincing for the maiden's introduction to sex, had Auteill not been so sexy and full of chemistry himself, as it oozes out of the screen, as though we had the ability to pump phenomes through the air!!! Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has a great auditorium (where I saw this film), but it ain't there yet!! See 'Quills', see 'Marat/Sade' and see this. All different viewpoints of a very complex point in French and world history.

It is hard to rate a film about Marquis de Sade without being preoccupied in any way. For instance, compared to "Goya en Burdeos" this film performed much better in drawing a historical context for a historical character. But I would still expect more than that from a film about de Sade. Despite the very good acting, original sets and costumes, and a coherent script, there was something missing. De Sade's known main characteristic are his sexual notions, and those have been hidden in innuendos. It was an attempt to portray de Sade without showing sexual excesses, but you cannot discuss a controversial character without disclosing the reasons for the controversy. To those who are not familiar with de Sade, I would recommend reading a brief description of him in an encyclopedia before seeing the film.