Quills Review
by Ron Small (iysmall AT aol DOT com)April 27th, 2001
QUILLS (2000)
Grade: C+
Director: Philip Kaufman
Screenplay: Doug Wright
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet, Joaquin Phoenix, Michael Caine, Billie Whitelaw, Patrick Malahide, Amelia Warner, Jane Menelaus, Stephan Moyer, Tony Pritchard, Michael Jenn
QUILLS is a white washing of the infamous Marquis De Sade (the fellow from whom the word sadism stems) who is played here by Geoffrey Rush as an iconoclastic rebel; the film sets De Sade up as a classic anti-hero seething with contempt at the uptight society that would cage him rather than deal with him. QUILLS centers around a brief event in the man's life; his being imprisoned by a mental hospital where, with his cagey charm, he tempts a comely orderly (Kate Winslet) into distributing his anonymously written soft core porn writings.
The character is so obsessed with thumbing his nose at authority that when the orderlies take his writing materials away he goes so far as to use his own blood, then excrement as ink. His nemesis is played by Michael Caine a brutal authoritarian who fits nicely with all the British baddies we've gotten this year; he's cruel and hypocritical and sadistic, with nary another trait to list. Rush's De Sade is the archtypical hero in stories such as these; the liberal teen rebel reconfigured as an aging Brit with a sharp, pointed intellect, and a nice way of turning the tables on whoever opposes him. (Even when naked he struts his scrawny 80's rock musician physique about as if he were the most powerful he-man). The director, Philip Kaufman makes him only slightly more repellent than Austin Powers, a character who bears some similarities to Rush's De Sade considering that both litter their speech with sexual entendres,
albeit De Sade's are of a slightly more intellectual nature.
Caine's character is made to be a despicable man who opposes freedom of speech, if that freedom includes anything of a sexual nature, yet we see him raping his own wife, whom he chooses in the way most would pick out a jelly bean. The character's despicability makes it that much easier for Kaufman to get his point across: if the people who censor are the ones indulging in such behavior than aren't they hypocrites? Yes, but that's an easy point to make if you never show (or if you show weakly) the other side of the argument (the one in favor of censoring society from potentially harmful materials), which I'll add, I don't agree with, but is still valid and worth bringing up lest you be accused of censorship all your own. Kaufman may not realize it, but for all his intelligence and well meaning his film practices selective censorship, only giving us the view it so chooses to give us while turning someone as repugnant as the Marquis into a sort of saintly sinner.
Its bothersome to me that Kaufman chose to make his film about De Sade (when really he could have made it about any perverted, locked up writer) considering that the version we get is far less interesting than the real man himself. De Sade was a rapist and torturer and this isn't even vaguely hinted at. Some of his arrests were absurd (this picture would have you believe that all were), one of which was for performing anal sex, though others were justified such as his holding a prostitute captive and abusing her. He believed that torture and rape were the right of an aristocrat and oddly enough that is the way this film portrays its villain who on his wedding night forces his youthful bride to have intercourse with him. He is the epitome of evil, yet his character may be more closely related to Marquis than the British wiseacre we get. I understand dramatic license, but only when its used to make a story more compelling, not less so; the de-clawed De Sade (rhythm completely unintentional) is less interesting than the real one so what's the point? To answer my own rhetorical query, I assume it's to be a liberal and point at how hypocritical conservatism is, which frankly I was tired of far before I saw last month's version, THE CONTENDER.
Like THE PEOPLE VS LARRY FLYNT (another liberal whitewash of a scummy figure, though one that is infinitely more powerful) this film takes a scumbag who, in the midst of using and degrading others, becomes a first amendment (this even prior to the first amendment) defender solely so he can continue to use and degrade.
Near the film's end the mentally ill patients have been so roused by Sade's writing that they tear apart the asylum and rape and kill. The film's supporters have pointed to this, claiming that Kaufman is showing the other side [of what pornography can lead to], but I disagree; the characters are mentally ill and can go off at anything. For instance we see one of the deranged patients\helpers masturbating while the Kate Winslet character chats with her friends.
Which leaves me to review the film as a piece of Saturday Night entertainment for which it succeeds mildly. When the film isn't on a polemical tract (which is rare) it gives us some delights; forceful acting by Rush, Joaquin Phoenix who turns in his usually watchable tortured performance, some clever wordplay, and the visual of a bodice ripping Kate Winslet who lends to her role an innocent curiosity made all the more palatable by her large eyed expressions. The cast is effective all around except for Caine (though its hardly his fault considering the character he was handed) who is doing one-dimensional evil here, not unlike the role he played in the otherwise un similar Steven Seagal vehicle, ON DEADLY GROUND. The film works often when it shows us Marquis' campy taunts and/or flirtations with Winslet (whose character, in real life, De Sade supposedly had a more torrid relationship with, which would have made for a more interesting film but probably would have ruined the forced poetry of screenwriter Wright's ending). As it is after their initial meeting where Rush asks the girl to trade him a kiss for each page ("You've already stolen my heart, as well as another prominent organ south of the equator") to which she responds begrudgingly, their relationship becomes too mannered and ultimately "safe"; she lets herself be wooed just a little, but never gives into her own erotic yearnings.
The look of the film is less typical that what we'd normally expect from a period piece. Its more in tune with a cheapie Hammer films production than a Merchant Ivory one, with its dismal interiors and dirty grey palette. The picture's tone is somewhere between freedom of speech lecture and naughty EMMANUELLE-like voyeurism, yet it never achieves any level of sexiness. This is completely understandable considering that virtually all the male characters are grotesque perverts.
http://www.geocities.com/incongruity98 Reeling (Ron Small)
--
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
