Directed by Philip Kaufman.
Quills looks like Oscar material.
And it sounds like Oscar material. But for all its tony trappings and supposedly daring black comedy, Quills, recently voted the year s best picture by the National Board of Review, is shrill, pretentious, sophomoric and often just plain dumb. Quills is a highly fictionalized account of the final days of the Marquis de Sade. The marquis, who added the word sadism to our vocabulary, scandalized 18th-century France in general and Emperor Napoleon in particular with his erotic to some tastes, obscene novels. Et voil Parisians in search of a quick turn-on can read Justine or 120 Days of Sodom.