Quills
by Philip Kaufman
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Billie Whitelaw, Geoffrey Rush, Michael Caine, Patrick Malahide, Pauline McLynnDirector: Philip Kaufman
Cinematographer: Rogier Stoffers
Composer: Stephen Warbeck
Editor: Peter Boyle
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 124 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-05-08
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: 20th Century Fox
Movie Reviews of Quills
Movie Review: A good film, but should have been a lot better....spoilers....
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a good, thought not great, movie. I was rather disappointed in its simplifying of the life of Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, aka the Marquis de Sade, into a rather boring, staid debate on free speech and its limits (or whether it should have any limits). Contrary to popular belief, de Sade was a much more complex figure than people give him credit for. While he was an indulgent libertine for most of his life, when he decided to start writing (at a comparitively late age), he threw himself into it totally and wrote some of the most startling and terrifying literature ever written. He was a great writer, though an incredibly bleak, twisted one. This film just seems to concentrate on the usual "individual freedom vs. the state" stuff, along with "artistic freedom", and honestly, it's boring. It's almost like they tried to sugarcoat de Sade, which is not the thing to do with him. Not to mention de Sade did not die like he did in this film. Nothing like that. De Sade died rather quietly, not chewing on a rosary while in the arms of the inquistor (Michael Caine's character).
The film is very well shot, with excellent performances by all, especially Geoffrey Rush as de Sade and Michael Caine as his main tormentor. It's directed by Philip Kaufman, a very underrated director who has made many extraordinary films (Henry and June and The Right Stuff for example). This is not an abysmal film, but it's nowhere what it shoudl be. It's a tame biography of one of the most notorious (yet brilliant) writers ever to be seen by humanity. Being a student of de Sade, I have to take exception with the rather simplistic way this story was rendered, and honestly, Kaufman should have known better.
Summary of Quills
Rush gives a tour-de-force performance as history's most infamous sexual adventurer, the Marquis de Sade. A nobleman with a literary flair, the Marquis lives in a madhouse where a beautiful laundry maid (Winslet) smuggles his erotic stories to a printer, defying orders from the asylum's resident priest (Phoenix). The titillating passages whip all of France into a sexual frenzy, until a fiercely conservative doctor (Caine) tries to put an end to the fun, inadvertently stoking the excitement to a fever pitch.With bedroom eyes and the mischievous smirk of an insatiable rou?, Geoffrey Rush is a perfect choice to play the Marquis de Sade in Quills, directed by Philip Kaufman and adapted by Doug Wright from his own stage play. Imprisoned in France's Charenton asylum at the turn of the 18th century, de Sade is a stately court jester in disheveled finery, and Rush imbues the role with the fierce urgency of a writer whose sexual fantasies are his sole remaining defense against repression and hypocrisy. Deprived of quill and ink, he writes with wine, then blood, then his own feces--a descent into madness or an impassioned refusal to be silenced? Quills embraces freedom of expression ("such beauty, such abomination," as one character notes) while affirming that all freedoms have a price.
De Sade smuggles manuscripts out of Charenton with help from Madeleine (Kate Winslet), a virginal laundress who relishes de Sade's scandalous prose--a divine irony since she was taught to read by asylum abb? Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix), whose desire for Madeleine is suppressed by Catholic propriety. The delicate dynamic of this trio is shattered by the arrival of Royer-Collard (Michael Caine, appearing somewhat comatose), a righteous hypocrite appointed to silence de Sade once and for all. It's all very engrossing as a piece of theater (which it still is, despite Kaufman's elegant filming), and although Wright's literate dialogue limits de Sade to zesty ripostes and sneering perversity, Rush's intensity ensures that the marquis's plight is no laughing matter. Quills has a point, makes it without condescension, and knows the difference between madness and passion. --Jeff Shannon
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