Film Review: Quills (2000)

(Source: google.com)

“Some things belong on paper, others in life. It’s a blessed fool who can’t tell the difference.”

If I’m completely honest, I initially decided to watch this film because I fancy Joaquin Phoenix loads. Aside from his looking dreamy as ever, Quills is a genuinely great film with a fantastic cast which exceeded my expectations when I first put it on.

In fact, before watching Quills, it’s worth knowing a bit about its protagonist, the infamous Marquis de Sade. Born in Paris in 1740, he was an aristocratic politician, philosopher and writer, known for what Wikipedia is calling his ‘libertine sexuality’, characterised by violence and a complete lack of morality; in reality this was most likely his perverted and often misogynistic sexual fantasies (the word ‘sadism’ is derived from his name, so take from that what you will). During the time of Napoleon, he was imprisoned several times, notably in the Bastille and finally in an insane asylum at Charenton near Paris, the setting of Quills. De Sade’s most notorious works include Justine (which appears in the film), Juliette and especially Les 120 Journées de Sodome or 120 Days of Sodom. Les 120 Journées de Sodome continues to shock and disgust today and was even made into the iniquitous film, Salò, by Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini. Salò is the kind of torturously disgusting stuff that almost always tops ‘Most Disturbing’ movie lists, and is the kind of shit you’ll read about but probably never actually bring yourself to watch.

Since its release in 2000, it’s difficult to say how well Philip Kaufman’s Quills has aged but it is nonetheless a unique and compelling piece of cinema, gruesome as it is erotic. Quills boasts a stellar cast of Geoffrey Rush as a jubilantly flamboyant and irrepressible Marquis; Michael Cane’s creepy portrayal of Dr. Royer-Collard; a post-Titanic Kate Winslet youthful as an English rose in her rendering of chambermaid Madeleine, and the underlying intensity Phoenix brings to Abbé de Coulmier. However, it’s not just the leading actors who dominate the screenplay – a company of actors from a disabled theatre group provide terrific characterisation of De Sade’s fellow asylum inmates.

As Rush’s ever erratic De Sade writes his sadistically pornographic literature from within the walls of Charenton and Madeleine smuggles it to the publishers of the outside world of France, it is extremely popular despite its sordid, scandalous content. Justine outrages the Emperor and he orders its anonymous author to be killed. At the asylum, Coulmier warns the Marquis against his writings and is then forced to remove his quills and parchment, and eventually anything he can use to transcribe his appalling stories. The cruel doctor Royer-Collard is called in to deal with De Sade’s unruly methods of preserving his writing (using blood, chicken bones, bed sheets, glass, his own body…), whilst his young bride Simone (Amelia Warner) pursues an lustful affair with Prouix, the architect of his chateau (Stephen Moyer) after having read De Sade.

Although Quills is set in the late 1700s, I am

Phoenix as Coulmier
(Source: imdb.com)

sure a fire alarm sounds in one scene and some of the quills used appear incongruously plastic; in addition, De Sade biographers claim Quills is plagued by historical inaccuracies. Nonetheless, this is far overridden by the passionate acting and the witty script, which is strangely funny considering what the film is about. A favourite part of mine is the borderline ridiculous yet amusing sexual metaphors littered throughout the movie, from Venus mound and flaxen quim to pikestaff and the winking eye of God. Exploring the themes of religion and freedom of expression with the slightly whirlwind subplot of Madeleine and Coulmier’s apprehensive romance, Quills is an engaging, rather distinctive period drama and, if nothing else, Joaquin is a total babe in it.