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Bookmark this pageQuills (2000)
Director: Philip Kaufman
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
It's true that the Marquis de Sade was held at the Charenton asylum, diagnosed with 'Libertine dementia', that he wrote plays there, and came into contact with a laundry maid (Winslet), the Abbé Coulmier (Phoenix) and Dr Royer-Collard (Caine). But scenarist Wright, adapting his own play, has freely imagined what passed between them in terms of ribald comedy and Grand Guignol horror. Rush has a whale of a time as Sade, a debauched rake with a permanent hard-on, playing sly devil's advocate to the Abbé's zealous innocent. The hypocritical Royer-Collard ups the ante when he institutes a new, repressive regime, confiscating the Marquis's writing instruments. Announcing itself as 'a naughty little tale', the film cultivates an air of sardonic detachment beneath a lascivious leer. It pokes at sexual taboos - it's pretty subversive, considering - but sexuality and creativity are indelibly linked, and its true subject is expression, repression and catharsis. If that sounds schematic, the script's frank libertarian agenda is muddied by Sade's perversity. On some bedrock level he relishes his own degradation. But it's the artist's irrefutable compulsion to write which fuels the most powerful sequence, as Sade turns in on himself for material in the basest sense of the word, bringing body and soul together at the last.Author: TCh
User reviews of this film
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- Mohan said...
- Posted on Nov 08 2008 05:10 Really great movie, Story narrating is vary curious and passionate. I want to see it again, It is great fob for Philip Kaufman, The acting of Kate and Rush is Excelent...
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Cast & crew
Director: Philip Kaufman
Producer: Julia Chasman, Nick Wechsler, Peter Kaufman
Cast: Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet, Joaquin Phoenix, Michael Caine, Billie Whitelaw, Patrick Malahide, Amelia Warner, Jane Menelaus, Stephen Moyer, Edward Tudor-Pole full cast
Genre(s): Period/Swashbucklers
Duration: 124 mins
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