Querelle

Starring:Brad Davis, Franco Nero, Jeanne Moreau, Laurent Malet, Hanno PÃ¶schl, GÃ¼nther Kaufmann, Burkhard Driest, Roger Fritz, Dieter Schidor, Natja Brunckhorst, Robert van Ackeren, Werner Asam, Isolde Barth, Axel Bauer, Neil Bell (IV), Gilles Gavois, Wolf Gremm, Karl-Heinz von Hassel, Y Sa Lo, Michael McLernon
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Studio: Sony Pictures
Product Type: DVD

Average customer rating:

A semi-surreal odyssey into sexuality & human nature
Is this who we are?
Jean Genet lives on film.
If survives only just... as camp homo erotic "adventure"
The final Opus!

Querelle
Starring: Brad Davis , Franco Nero , Jeanne Moreau , Laurent Malet , and Hanno Pöschl
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B00005JXY5
Release Date: 2001-07-10

Customer Reviews:

A semi-surreal odyssey into sexuality & human nature.......2007-04-11

Fassbinder's "Querelle" translates as more of a filmed play than an actual film: characters speak stilted dialogues, the narrator delivers philosophical passages and thoughts of the characters, and so on. The late Brad Davis stands out as Querelle, a darkly hunky French sailor who can "never fall in love with a man", yet can give himself to one sexually. The characters intertwine in a tale frought with homoeroticism & violence.
My reaction: I became bored with this film's pretentiousness about half-way through it. Not Fassbinder's best, but it's interesting the way he uses lighting to bathe a character or the orange skies prominent throughout the film. I found the occasional narrative dialogues annoying and intermittently funny. The European artsiness of the film dominates this tale. There are interesting moments of symbolism here & there.
But for my taste, it was just a bit too hokey and campy in places.

Is this who we are?.......2007-01-16

"QUERELLE"

Is This Who We are?

Amos Lassen and Cinema Pride

"Querelle" according to director Fassbinder is about "a guy whose soul transforms in a crocodile's one". Querelle the man is a modern mythic man, a narcissist, an opium dealer and a murderer, a mariner and a thief. He is the best and the worst of all worlds. In the film Jeanne Moreau sings in her throaty voice what seems to be the theme of the movie, "All men kill those who love".
Fassbinder ended hi career with "Querelle"; it was his swan song. It was also a film of memories for him as he seemed to cast all of the characters of his former movies into it--in disguise and if you are not alert you may miss them.
Based on Jean Genet's book "Querelle de Brest", Fassbinder chose to use the language of the book as dialog and as somewhat of a masturbatory narration in order to give the movie a certain atmosphere that begins to feel like poetic graffiti.
Querelle (Brad Davis) is a sailor in search of himself and in danger of finding out just who he is. He is strong and this commands respect from those that he knows. He is beautiful of countenance and this raised desires of others. He is so conflicted internally that he drives himself to self destruction while he explores his own deviant feelings. His lust brings him to violence and his denial degrades him, sex for him becomes violent and violence becomes love for him. He is simple and complex at the same time. He is both vulnerable and malevolent and this is what the action of the film revolves around. Yet the star of the film is the port of Brest that is pornographic in its very existence. The men that frequent the port are archetypes as familiar as the men created by the notorious Tom of Finland.
Unlike the overt homosexuality that pervades the films of today, "Querelle" is soaking with covert masculinity and it explores the conflicts and complexities in the relationships that exist between men when they discover desire for each other.
After Brad Davis was diagnosed with AIDS, he could not find work in Hollywood. He went to Europe to work and Fassbinder cast him as Querelle. As Davis portrays the sailor, he breathes life into him. And "Querelle" is not per se a gay movie but rather a discourse on the nature of homosexuality. Querelle, the man, does not believe that two men can love one another but they can enjoy each other sexually. Querelle and his men show no affection, they just mate sexually.
What an intriguing film this is! It is so sexual while not being excessive and it is both amoral and decadent. It is explicit and delicate and outrageous. As direct as it is there is still much to infer in its portrayal of homosexuality. It ages like fine wine. Whenever I watch it I am amazed that it still rings true. Even with its flaws it represents the decadent mind. It will make your head spin and send you thinking. Is this really who we are?

Jean Genet lives on film........2006-09-24

The imperfections of this film--slow pacing (by American standards), choppy transitions, complex and convoluted plot, unpredictable outcomes hidden from the viewer until the last moment then released with insufficient force--are truly irrelevent when the experience of the essence of Genet's novel and its leading character are so effectively brought to the screen in its form, color, casting and concept. Brad Davis is awesome in his portrayal of Querelle--enormous emotional and physical risk, awkward to watch at times because of its truth and openness. If you love Genet, as I do, there is no finer interpreter of his sensibilities than Fassbinder. I am not an expert on Fassbinder, but I love this film.

If survives only just... as camp homo erotic "adventure".......2006-06-07

It has a wonderful theatrical setting and Jeanne Mereou and Brad Davis and an expressional look.... Under these circumstanses - and the homo erotic theme - it survives, if only just....

The final Opus!.......2005-11-25

There are many aspects in common respect Fassbinder and his Italian homologue Pier Paolo Pasolini. Both artists became the fragmented mirror of a collapsed and miscarried society; both of them made devastating final Opus (Salo and Querelle); both were artistic Ambassadors of the Post War generation; likewise both were descendents precisely of two nations joined by contiguous ideologies and far beyond their sexual patterns, both were solid and deep thinkers, imbued and steeled by a invisible commitment that allowed them to expose and immolate themselves prematurely, a very curious aspect to remark if you relate them with other two emblematic figures of different latitudes: Mishima and Jim Morrison.

Twelve days after winning the coveted Golden Bear in Berlin with Veronika Voss, Fassbinder stated Querelle told the story "about a guy whose soul transforms in a crocodile `s one." He repeated Genet `s words, but besides he referred about himself and who wanted to be. Querelle is a modern mythic personage; irremediably narcissist; opium dealer and murder, mariner and thief, the best and worst of both worlds.

Querelle filming was not fortunate, somehow the burden of the song repeated by Jeanne Moreau seemed to mold the general anima state: "All men kill those who love; some of them when are young; some of them when are old; some with passion; some with gold; all men kill those who love."

Fassbinder was inflamed of creative and febrile enthusiasm; perhaps in his wildest dreams the death smiled him, but he never gave up, he wanted to be loved and recognized . After Berlin, Cannes and after Venice said once.

But there are some hidden communicant vessels beneath the spirit that would seem to put in march some fatidic and clue devices to establish finally the unexpected ending of a hazardous life who risked and bet, but who inscribed his name in the Cinema with bloody words: Fassbinder.

It is absolutely impossible for you not to presage the bitter farewell taste, Querelle became somehow as the last host of a long list of previous guests. In that stage appeared ancient characters; a true parade of memories; because every time we remind Ali, Maria Braun, Effie Briest, Petra von Kant, Veronika, Lolita among so many others load the screen, Fassbinder will reappear masked behind his outrageous way of dressing and dark glasses, repeating us what he told once to a friend about his workaholic tendency, he responded clever or perhaps convinced of a secret precognition sense: "I will rest when I am dead."

Fassbinder made thirty six films in just seventeen years. And his death became a true void in the German Cinema, a place that still keeps, pitifully empty.

In memoriam (1946-1982).

Average customer rating:

A semi-surreal odyssey into sexuality & human nature
Is this who we are?
Jean Genet lives on film.
If survives only just... as camp homo erotic "adventure"
The final Opus!

Querelle
Starring: Brad Davis , Franco Nero , Jeanne Moreau , Laurent Malet , and Hanno Pöschl
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

( Q ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
Similar Items:

Fox and His Friends
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant
The Stationmaster's Wife
Teorema
Dante's Cove - The Complete Second Season

ASIN: B00005UMRV

Customer Reviews:

A semi-surreal odyssey into sexuality & human nature.......2007-04-11

Is this who we are?.......2007-01-16

Jean Genet lives on film........2006-09-24

If survives only just... as camp homo erotic "adventure".......2006-06-07

It has a wonderful theatrical setting and Jeanne Mereou and Brad Davis and an expressional look.... Under these circumstanses - and the homo erotic theme - it survives, if only just....

The final Opus!.......2005-11-25

Querelle [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.0 Import - Australia ]

Average customer rating:

Querelle [ NON-USA FORMAT, PAL, Reg.0 Import - Australia ]
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Manufacturer: Massive
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Art House & International | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Foreign & International | Stores | DVD | Video
ASIN: B000FTFAOM

Product Description

Australia released, PAL/Region 0 DVD: it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada. LANGUAGES: English (Dolby Digital 2.0), WIDESCREEN, SYNOPSIS: 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 with Nono, Lysiane's husband : if you win, you are allowed to make love with Lysiane, if you lose, you have to make love with Nono... Querelle loses on purpose...

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