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| Movies,
Graham Bower,
12 February 2001 |
Rating: F4
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Period dramas have always had a kinky edge to them. There was always something incongruous about the prim-and-proper BBC strapping busty ladies into tight corsets and thigh-high boots to strut around echoing buildings whilst enunciating “mi lord” oh so perfectly. How refreshing then to see a period drama where sadism and perversity takes central stage. Indeed, the hero of Quills, the Marquis de Sade, put the “sad” in sadism.
Quills is both black comedy and high melodrama, in one bleak and depressing package. Shine star, Geoffrey Rush, gives an energetic and compelling performance as the notorious erotic writer, in Napoleonic France, ably and amply assisted by period drama stalwart Kate Winslet as the purvey prison laundress. And boy, does this prison have some dirty laundry! Without the consent of woolly liberal Prison Governor Joaquin Phoenix, the Marquis is making a tidy living by getting his smutty stories published in Paris. Winslet, an admirer of the Marquis’ work assists by smuggling his manuscripts out of the prison in bundles of laundry.
Everything goes swimmingly until Napoleon reads one of the Marquis’ more lascivious numbers and sends in crazy doctor Michael Cane to cure the errant Marquis, and restore the French libido to it’s previously righteous and vanilla flavour. Of course, Michael Cane is the biggest pervert of the bunch, and after indulging in a spot of paedophilia, he gets to work in abusing and torturing the prison’s population.
It’s all a whole heap of fun – for the first two hours at least. Rush’s Marquis is deliciously funny, Winslet’s laundress is wickedly impulsive, Michael Cane’s doctor’s superficial civility belies a devilish nastiness, and Phoenix’s Governor is hopelessly indecisive, but ultimately sympathetic.
Exploring the uneasy relationship between freedom of expression and censorship, Quills takes an unflinchingly single-minded approach which is at times breath taking. My only real criticism would be that it could have been a touch shorter. As the witty dialogue and smutty bad taste (“let’s leave pools of love on the Peruvian marble”) gives way to gruelling horror, my feet became itchy.
UK rating:
18
US rating:
R
Directed by Philip Kaufman
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Joaquin Phoenix, Kate Winslet, Michael Caine, Michael Jenn.
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