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Supervert Picks
Given that in most places the Marquis de Sade could not legally be published until after World War II, it should not be surprising that the Sade filmography is rather short. Really there are only three films that invoke or represent Sade in a serious enough way to be worth viewing. The first was Peter Brook's 1966 film Marat/Sade, based on the play by Peter Weiss. The conceit of both film and play is exactly described by the latter's un-abbreviated title: The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat As Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton Under the Direction of The Marquis de Sade. The second significant entry in the Sade filmography is of course Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1975 film Salo, The 120 Days of Sodom — a film true enough to the Sadian spirit that it has sometimes been subject to censorship. And the third and final item on the Sade filmography is the more recent 2000 film Quills, directed by Philip Kaufman from a play by Doug Wright. Like Marat/Sade, Quills chooses to depict Sade at the time of his long imprisonment in the French prison at Charenton. However, the resemblances between the two films pretty much end there. In fact, the two films take such different approaches to their subject that it is tempting to view the differences as representative of a larger sea change in society's perception of Sade in particular and sexuality in general. Brook's film was willfully experimental, arty, chaotic, daring — and in this you can see that in 1966 it was still an act of defiance and rebellion to embrace the Marquis de Sade. Conversely, it would be a disservice to call Kaufman's film Hollywood in its approach, and yet Quills does emphasize story over form, character over self-consciousness — and in making Sade into something like a naughty uncle, the film suggests that contemporary society has gone far past the point where it feels threatened by the author of Justine and 120 Days of Sodom. Sade is played with much panache by the actor Geoffrey Rush, who imbues the marquis with equal parts lechery and sarcasm. The latter may really be the film's greatest contribution to the image of Sade, since it offsets the oft-lamented "monotony" of Sade's prose with a biting wit. When told that his books are being burned, Sade ripostes that "that's the peril of composing such incendiary prose." Or when the Abbé du Coulmier, the young priest in charge of the prison (played rather fumblingly by Joaquin Phoenix), declares that it is safe for him but not for a female to be alone with the marquis in his cell, since "I'm not a beautiful young prospect ripe for corruption," Sade replies with syrupy insinuation: "Don't be so sure." These are relatively obvious one-liners, and yet Rush delivers them with such innuendo that they sting and please at the same time. As a result, perhaps anyone who sees the film and then returns to read one of Sade's books will manage to see the humor lying fallow in the tortures and antiquated vocabulary of his prose ("Oh fuck! fuck! all of us, let's discharge together! Christ, but I perish! I expire! Ah, in my life never have I come more voluptuously! Hast lost thy sperm, Chevalier?"). The story of Quills pits Sade and his desire to write against the Abbé du Coulmier, who would indulge his writing as a spiritual exorcism if only the marquis would promise not to publish, and against the alienist Dr. Royer-Collard, a man of science (played by Michael Caine) whose methods of psychiatric treatment would be considered, by today's standards, sadistic. Ostensibly the film views the story from the vantage point of a laundress, Madeleine "Maddy" LeClerc, played by Kate Winslet (who, aside from her star turn in Titanic, has demonstrated a perverse willingness to play some rather unusual roles, such as the free-spirited mom in Hideous Kinky and the schoolgirl murderer in Heavenly Creatures). And while the role is based on a historical figure, a laundress who did perform "services" for Sade in Charenton, unfortunately for Ms. Winslet the character really seems extraneous to the entire story, in spite of the fact that the film unconvincingly tries to position her as a love interest of both the priest and the marquis. After all, did Sade ever really have love interests? Or were his interests exclusively sexual? You can believe he wanted to fuck Ms. Winslet's laundress, with her appealingly pushed-up cleavage, but it's difficult to believe he could have fallen in love with her. And that leads to a central problem of the film's relatively feel-good portrait of Sade. While it is entirely Sadian that the figureheads of good end up depraved — the priest becomes a necrophile, the alienist brutally robs the cradle to obtain a virgin bride (fetchingly played by Amelia Warner), who in turn ends up reading Justine and running off with a handsome young architect — somehow it just seems wrong to give the figurehead of evil a heart. It's fine for the film to take historical liberties to make a better story, and admittedly it is difficult to know if Sade the man really did have a sentimental side — but for anyone who has read his work, his letters, and his biography, it is difficult to imagine Sade in love. Could he really have been smitten by the laundress who, in actuality, exchanged sexual favors for money? Maybe. But the hallmark of Sade's work is an absolute relentlessness of pleasure and pain, a calculus of orgasms and beatings, ejaculations and murders, in which there is absolutely no place for intangibles and sentiment. Sade never sugar-coated a bitter pill. To the contrary, he was likely to ram it down your throat, sew your lips shut, then fuck you in the ass — in imagination if not in person. In spite of this and some other small problems — e.g. Kaufman has an odd knack for using the camera to undermine otherwise brilliant acting performances, as also occurred in his Henry Miller film, Henry and June; in this sense it's symptomatic that Quills is a film of a play since, as in a theater, you never quite lose sight of the actor beneath the role — Quills is an artful (as opposed to arty) contribution to the filmography of the "philosopher in chains." Sade probably would have thought it was heavy on narrative and light on fucking, but then again, if Sade were a film critic, he probably would have thought the same thing of Deep Throat. Email this page to a friendTell someone about Supervert Picks - Quills at supervert.com. (Email addresses are not recorded or used in any way.) Your name
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