Querelle Poster

Querelle (1982)

Drama  
Rayting:   6.8/10 5.9K votes
Country: West Germany | France
Language: English
Release date: 4 November 1982

French sailor Querelle arrives in Brest and starts frequenting a strange whorehouse. He discovers that his brother Robert is the lover of the lady owner, Lysiane. Here, you can play dice ...

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onepotato2 21 March 2009

Querelle is an erotic fable about several closeted tough guys loitering around the French Navy port Brest, in some indeterminate timeframe. In a go-for-broke concept, Q shines a spotlight on the latent homosexuality in supposedly straight activities like the military, gambling, fighting, ports-of-call, whore-houses, etc.. It has more fetish imagery for gay men than Ben Hur or the Ten Commandments.

Basically five or six male figures ponder, intellectualize and ruminate themselves into and out of mechanical couplings. Genet's fringe figures (...the most verbal, stylized brutes ever) wrestle with their suppressed homosexual urges, but remain inactive until a suitable pretext can be found to copulate with the guy who's driving them to distraction, or, (just as good) till they find some criminal outlet to discharge their energy. It's all loosely strung together by an occasional narrator who's a few mint juleps away from a coma. It's as fragmented as Petronius' Satyricon, and Genet himself, writing from prison, was always a million analytical miles away from his own experiences. It's no surprise that a Genet film has problems with forward momentum and bogs down in ideas: weird, erotic, complex and spiritual. With the amount of time you'd need to spend viewing and re-viewing this incoherent movie to get something out of it, why not read the book?

Even if you can get past the artifice of the unsubtle stage set (with its faux-masonry phalluses), this would still be over the top; as campy as humanly possible because the acting has been taken to such a strange level of abstraction. "A" will overtly tell "B" what B's backstory and emotional temperament are, as an odd way to get info to the audience ...and the story still ends up emotionally and psychologically diffuse. It feels like a half-hearted dress rehearsal, where everyone has been told to suppress all hints of their motivations.

You could find any number of things here to mock, but for me Brad Davis' bloodless line readings are toxic. Kudos to him for taking on such a difficult project, but as the central figure, his muted performance is just too flat to hold the movie together. His entire audition may have consisted of the single line, "Could you oil up and try on this tank top?" It's a mystery why Rocky Horror became a cult movie with lines shouted back at its absurdities, but this didn't. (...guy in dragon-lady drag? check! ...twinkie in Shirley Temple wig? check!)

Querelle is an experimental, epic piece of erotic deflation, generally too challenging, complex and inert for any audience that it might reach, ...kind of like a Genet book actually. It expects a certain maturity from an audience, to grapple with its dense weave of sexual ideas, but it's also pretty darned silly on its face. You can explore the transcendent aspects of sex and crime by entering Genet's world, or you could just go have some forbidden sex and rob a convenience store ...then ruminate.

harry-76 6 March 1999

Fmovies: This attempt to film Genet is commendable in tackling so difficult a work. Fassbinder's scenery is so obviously studio sets that the film takes on a "filmed play" quality. The color is beautiful, and the cast is very attractive. I had difficulty in following the proceedings, and much of the printed quotatons were puzzling. Some of the fantasy inserts were likewise confusing. But the strong cast made up for many of these weak points and raised the film to a level it would otherwise never have achieved. It is still lesser Fassbinder, but an often fascinating film to watch.

sunheadbowed 12 February 2017

Fassbinder's swan song takes everything to the extreme. So much so that critics have never quite been able to stomach it.

'Querelle' is such a stunning work of art on several levels: the Navy dockyard set with its near-sepia hazy opiate yellows and browns (contrasting against the colour of the sailors' outfits, the brilliant whiteness a parody of purity), evoking both sickness and a perpetual dusk of hard-ons, repression, indulgence and violence; the cinematography, some of the best in any Fassbinder film, capturing the actors' reflections in mirrors as the camera coolly observes the lovers they talk to (or 'at') -- lust in an impenetrable frame in which no one can be satisfied and everyone has their own agenda; the incredible erotic sexual ambiance that manages to be both appealing and threatening; the acting (Davis clearly finds this unsubtle role liberating after working in the very gay yet very homophobic world of Hollywood). I find more to enjoy in this film every time I view it.

The critics got it wrong here; perhaps a little too much sodomy for their bourgeois tastes? Let's see.. it has Brad Davis shirtless and sweaty in almost every scene (the one in which he's covered in oil and grease has to be the money shot); it features Jeanne Moreau being dramatic and elegant and making statements about men's 'pricks' (in a role that seemingly couldn't have been anyone else's); it's an adaptation of a work by the brilliant Jean Genet; it's directed by the incredible Fassbinder; it has lines like, 'my cock came out covered in s--t, if you want to know' -- how could all of this equal a bad film? Not in my book.

The film ends with an ode to Genet: 'Apart from his books we know nothing about him. Not even the date of his death, which he supposes to be near.' Fassbinder would be dead before the film was released, four years before Genet. And besides his films, we know nothing about Fassbinder.

'Querelle' is Fassbinder's final 'f--k you.'

bl-2 6 January 1999

Querelle fmovies. When reading Genet, the thought that his books are no good for screen adaptation will frequently occur. Fassbinder's "Querelle" might be able to prove otherwise. Still, the movie seems more like a dream to me, like passing images illustrating a story rather than telling it. Great cast!

Chaves7777 11 March 2007

"Querelle",which was last work of Rainer, was my first Fassbinder's experience. I think many times before see it, because I didn't know if "Querelle" was the correct film to begin to understand the work of an artist like Fassbinder. But, i decided... and i read a Lot of critics that tell that was a bad movie and a bad work of Fassbinder... i think just the opposite. Fassbinder's "Querelle" is one of the best movies that i have ever seen with this delicate topic of homosexuality.

Fassbinder's "Querelle", based in the novel of the same name by Genet, told us the story of Querelle, a sailor who is going to live an unpleasant conflict among him and the people who surrounds him. Is a tale of sexuality and murder. Fassbinder's "Querelle" is an important anlization of the man's decadence. A man that is able to murder, to sell his best friend, to be a real monster. But Querelle is a man, and at the same time is a selfish monster... like much of us. The movie is too an analization of the masculine thing, and is important have clear that Fassbinder's "Querelle" is not a gay film at all... is the recognition of different ways to love.

I have not seen much of Fassbinder (I hope that my next film, that i want see: "The Marriage of Maria Braun", catch me like this one) but this work with poetic force is one of the most important looks (As i said before) to the human decadence (With "Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma" and "Dogville"). I hope that people that has not still seen it don't be allowed to guide of much of the bad critics. Just see it... and tell us the things that you think. For me, is a real masterpiece.

*Sorry for the mistakes... well, if there any.

negerfarfar 27 February 2005

Feels like Fassbinder is exploring the darker side of human psyche rater than being interested in some linear story-telling - and he is quite good at it. The chain of events which both leads and follows Querelle are surreal and fantastic. The theatrical tone over the picture only adds to the strong sensation of human behavior on the limit of madness and passion. Very demanding and interesting. Brad Davis is flawless in his portrayal of the lonely sailor. Burkhard Driest is also absolutely cut out for his sleazy yet fascinating character- a bribed and dirty cop who befriends Querelle not knowing that the sailor is responsible for the crimes he is investigating.

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