Querelle

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This article is about the 1982 film directed by R. W. Fassbinder. For the 1947 novel by Jean Genet, see Querelle of Brest.

Querelle
A man in a sailor uniform leads with his back on a large brick phallus sculpture.
Theatrical release poster
Directed byRainer Werner Fassbinder
Screenplay byRainer Werner Fassbinder
Burkhard Driest
Based onQuerelle of Brest
by Jean Genet
Produced byMichael McLernon
Dieter Schidor
Sam Waynberg
StarringBrad Davis
Franco Nero
Jeanne Moreau
Laurent Malet
Hanno Pöschl
CinematographyXaver Schwarzenberger
Edited byJuliane Lorenz
Music byPeer Raben
Production
company
Distributed byScotia (West Germany)
Gaumont (France)
Release dates
  • August 1982 (1982-08) (Montreal)
  • 8 September 1982 (1982-09-08) (France)
  • 16 September 1982 (1982-09-16) (West Germany)
Running time
108 minutes[1]
CountriesWest Germany
France
LanguageEnglish
BudgetDEM4 million

Querelle is a 1982 English-language arthouse film directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and starring Brad Davis, adapted from French author Jean Genet's 1947 novel Querelle of Brest. It was Fassbinder's last film, released shortly after his death at the age of 37.

Plot[edit]

The plot centers on the handsome Belgian sailor Georges Querelle, who is also a thief and murderer. When his ship, Le Vengeur, arrives in Brest, he visits the Feria, a bar and brothel for sailors run by Madame Lysiane, whose lover, Robert, is Querelle's brother. Querelle has a love/hate relationship with his brother: when they meet at La Feria, they embrace, but also punch one another slowly and repeatedly in the belly. Lysiane's husband Nono works behind the bar and also manages La Feria's illicit affairs with the assistance of his friend Mario, the corrupt police captain.

Querelle makes a deal to sell opium to Nono. During the execution of the deal, he murders his accomplice Vic by slitting his throat. After delivering the drugs, Querelle announces that he wants to sleep with Lysiane. He knows that this means he will have to throw dice with Nono, who has the privilege of playing a game of chance with all of her prospective lovers. If Nono loses, the suitor is allowed to proceed with his affair. If the suitor loses, however, he must submit to anal sex with Nono first, according to Nono's maxim: "That way, I can say my wife only sleeps with arseholes." Querelle deliberately loses the game, allowing himself to be sodomized by Nono. When Nono gloats about Querelle's "loss" to Robert, who won his dice game, the brothers end up in a violent fight. Later, Querelle's brother becomes Lysiane's lover, and Querelle has sex with Mario.

Luckily for Querelle, a builder, Gil, murders his work mate Theo, who had been harassing and sexually assaulting him. Gil hides from the police in an abandoned prison, and Roger, who is in love with Gil, establishes contact between Querelle and Gil in the hopes that Querelle can help Gil escape. Querelle falls in love with Gil, who closely resembles his brother. Gil returns his affections, but Querelle betrays Gil by tipping off the police. Querelle cleverly arranged it so that the murder of Vic is also blamed on Gil.

A perennial undercurrent in the film is that Querelle's superior, Lieutenant Seblon, is in love with Querelle, and constantly tries to prove his manliness to him. Seblon is aware that Querelle murdered Vic, but chooses to protect him.

The film ends with the sailors aboard Le Vengeur, presumably about to leave port. A heartbroken Lysiane, spurned by Querelle, conducts a tarot reading for Robert: she realizes that he and Querelle were never brothers after all. As Lysiane laughs maniacally, we see Querelle's birth record transcribed on-screen.

Cast[edit]

Production[edit]

According to Genet's biographer Edmund White, Querelle was originally going to be made by Werner Schroeter, with a scenario by Burkhard Driest, and produced by Dieter Schidor. However, Schidor could not find the money to finance a film by Schroeter, and therefore turned to other directors, including John Schlesinger and Sam Peckinpah, before finally settling on Fassbinder. Driest wrote a radically different script for Fassbinder, who then "took the linear narrative and jumbled it up". White quotes Schidor as saying "Fassbinder did something totally different, he took the words of Genet and tried to meditate on something other than the story. The story became totally unimportant for him. He also said publicly that the story was a sort of third-rate police story that wouldn't be worth making a movie about without putting a particular moral impact into it".[2]

Schroeter had wanted to make a black and white film with amateur actors and location shots, but Fassbinder instead shot it with professional actors in a lurid, expressionist color, and on sets in the studio. Edmund White comments that the result is a film in which, "Everything is bathed in an artificial light and the architectural elements are all symbolic."[2]

Stylistically, the film is inspired heavily by the works of erotic artist Tom of Finland. Besides costume design and hair styles, actors were posed in silhouettes and scenarios common to Tom Of Finland artwork. "The director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took obvious cues from Tom of Finland in his 1982 film adaptation of Jean Genet’s novel Querelle. As the eponymous lead, actor Brad Davis was Tom’s sailor come to life."[3]

Soundtrack[edit]

Both songs were nominated to the 1984 Razzie Awards for "Worst Original Song".

Release[edit]

Querelle sold more than 100,000 tickets in the first three weeks after its release in Paris, the first time that a film with a gay theme had achieved such success.[2] On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, which categorizes reviews as positive or negative only, the film has an approval rating of 57% calculated based on 14 critics comments. By comparison, with the same opinions being calculated using a weighted arithmetic mean, the rating is 6.10/10.[4] Writing for The New York Times critic Vincent Canby noted that Querelle was "a mess...a detour that leads to a dead end."[5] Penny Ashbrook calls Querelle Fassbinder's "perfect epitaph: an intensely personal statement that is the most uncompromising portrayal of gay male sensibility to come from a major filmmaker."[6] Edmund White considers Querelle the only film based on Genet's book that works, calling it "visually as artificial and menacing as Genet's prose."[7] Genet, in discussion with Schidor, said that he had not seen the film, commenting "You can't smoke at the movies."[2]

References[edit]

  1. ^ "Querelle (18)". British Board of Film Classification. 27 July 1983. Retrieved 29 May 2013.
  2. ^ a b c d White, Edmund. Genet: A Biography. Alfred A. Knopf 1993, pp. 615-616
  3. ^ Tierney, Paul. "TOM OF FINLAND: Light and shade". TOM OF FINLAND FOUNDATION. TOM OF FINLAND FOUNDATION. Retrieved 6 March 2024.
  4. ^ "Querelle". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 18 July 2022.
  5. ^ Canby, Vincent (29 April 1983). "Fassbinder's Last". The New York Times.
  6. ^ Penny Ashbrook (1993). Gilbert, Harriet (ed.). The Sexual Imagination: From Acker to Zola. London: Jonathan Cape. p. 87. ISBN 0-224-03535-5.
  7. ^ White, Edmund. Genet: A Biography. Alfred A. Knopf 1993, p. 340

External links[edit]

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