Querelle

Plot synopsis:
The plot centers on the handsome Belgian sailor Georges Querelle, who is also a thief and murderer. When his ship, Le Vengeur, arrives in Brest, he visits the Feria, a bar and brothel for sailors run by the madame Lysiane, whose lover, Robert, is Querelle's brother. Querelle has a love/hate relationship with his brother; when they meet at La Feria, they embrace, but also punch one another slowly and repeatedly in the belly. Lysiane's husband Nono tends bar and manages La Feria's underhanded affairs with the assistance of his friend, the corrupt police captain Mario.
Querelle makes a deal to sell opium to Nono, and murders his accomplice Vic. After delivering the drugs, Querelle announces that he wants to sleep with Lysiane. He knows that this means he will have to throw dice with Nono, who, as Lysiane's husband, has the privilege of playing a game of chance with all of her prospective lovers. If Nono loses, the suitor is allowed to proceed with his affair. If the suitor loses, however, he must submit to anal sex with Nono first. "That way, I can say my wife only sleeps with assholes, " Nono says. Querelle deliberately loses the game, allowing himself to be sodomized by Nono. When Nono gloats about Querelle's "loss" to Robert, who won his dice game, the brothers end up in a violent fight. Later, Querelle becomes Lysiane's lover, and also has sex with Mario.
Luckily for Querelle, a construction worker called Gil murders his coworker Theo, who had been harassing and sexually assaulting him. Gil is also considered to be the murderer of Vic. Gil hides from the police in an abandoned prison, and Roger, who is in love with Gil, establishes contact between Querelle and Gil in the hopes that Querelle can help Gil flee. Querelle falls in love with Gil, who closely resembles his brother. Gil returns his affections, but Querelle betrays Gil by tipping off the police. Querelle had cleverly arranged it so that his murder of Vic is also blamed on Gil.
In parallel there is a plot line concerning Querelle's superior, Lieutenant Seblon, who is in love with Querelle, and constantly tries to prove his manliness to him. Seblon is aware that Querelle murdered Vic, but chooses to protect him. Near the end of the film, Seblon reveals his love and concern to a drunken Querelle, and they kiss and embrace before returning to Le Vengeur.

Tags: psychedelic, murder, melodrama

Review:
Since Brad Davis also appeared in THE PLAYER, we might say this film is like Huckleberry Finn meeting Nosferatu with a drunken Anne Rice as narrator.
As a source novel, Genet's 'Querelle' presents a challenge for any adaptation but as this is R.W. Fassbinder's final work, one is compelled to ignore one's initial (poor) response and dig for signs of the vision seen elsewhere in his cannon.This is a film that unrelentingly refuses to let the viewer in.
Of course, much of this overtly gay posturing can be seen simply as high camp and add an undeniable veneer of silliness which is, quite frankly, hard to shake off.However, this is a deeply serious film.
It's hard to fully know what to make of 'Querelle' but either way, although stunningly lit, it has little of the swagger or movement of his best work and comes across as rather staid and inert.
I frequently find Fassbinder quite preachy, but with Querelle, he just lets the action unfold like a contagious disease infecting the viewer's mind with its rapturous toxins.
Far from being a masterpiece like "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" or "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant", but this is a very good project directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, his last and the one he got some of the heaviest criticism of his career.
In a way, the most tragical of all of his works after being forced to cut part of it to get a release in America, probably the first time he ever had to back down and cut something he directed.Based on author Jean Genet's 1947 novel Querelle de Brest, the movie revolves about Querelle, an Belgian sailor (Brad Davis) who plays with danger with his criminal affairs selling opium and his involvement with male and female, using of his good looks to get what he wants.
Querelle's a man with many love affairs and relations, center of attention of his own brother (Hanno Pöschl), and their strange "brotherhood", love/hate kind of thing; Nuno, his wife (Jeanne Moreau) owner of a decadent bar where most of the film takes place, and he's treasured from distance by his captain (Franco Nero).
The other half of the film explores what can be called of real love between Querelle and a murderer (who is played by the same actor who plays the brother).The movie is very open when it comes to presenting Querelle's involvements with both genders, specially his sexual scenes with another men, very bold at the time.
If the story gets too much on a second plan, since the ideas are somewhat vague, foggy, the high point of enjoyment of the film is seeing Querelle getting well with his mates.
Fassbinder intrigues us more with the whole concept of man being a product of his environment, adapting to his (and others) needs and what he makes here (don't know if the same happen in the book) is a strange fantasy world where everyone is bisexual or have more inclination towards another man, enjoying endless sunsets created on fake sets, surrounded by large columns resembling phallic elements.
The script is more like a literary work than a cinematic experience, with several cards expressing Querelle's inner thoughts or the captain's romantic narration watching the love of his life, working all sweaty.Rainer had his reasons and perhaps we'll never know what motivated him making this film in the way he did, but the artist is deeply immersed in this work, putting elements of his life, his love and all (including a dedication to El-Hedi Ben Salem, one of his partners, who died that year).
The risk taken by Brad Davis was incredible and unfortunately he paid the price for it, barely appearing on well-known films or great projects.
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.
and i read a Lot of critics that tell that was a bad movie and a bad work of Fassbinder...
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.
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").
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.
A R.W. Fassbinder double-feature binge (Chinese ROULETTE 1976 and QUERELLE 1982, his swan song) coincides with a starting point for me to access his oeuvre, as one of the pioneer of modern German cinema, Fassbinder has a burning-too-fast career orbit, as if he was exerting all his energy in cranking out films before his dooming self-indulgent suicide at the age of 37 (with more than 40 works done in 15 years).
While QUERELLE is projected on more ritualized dark amber light maroon background setting stimulating a claustrophobic oppression of lust and desire within a handful locations (the faux-deck of a ship ashore, the phallus worship Hotel Feria Bar, an underground tunnel for hideaway), a male-dominant sexual obsession mingled with blatant homosexual thrust to an astounding incestuous extremity, brilliantly done via an intuitive candor.
Mirror is a recurrent item in both films, exposes the other-half which reflects the true id inside one's soul, in Chinese ROULETTE the stunning flux of the stationary tableaux interlacing two or three out of the eight characters orchestrates a scintillating picture of a guilt-and-punishment visual symphony with swishy panache; in QUERELLE, mirrors reduce their occurrence but the conscientiously measured compositions transpire an even more ostentatious narcissism with a sultry plume of hormone-excreting rugged contours of male bodies.
QUERELLE is adapted from Jean Genet's novel "QUERELLE DE BREST", whose literature text also introduced through the soothing voice-over of an unknown narrator, the film does stage a sensible amount of poetic license to filter a vicarious compassion through a singular mortal's inscrutable behavioral symptoms; in Chinese ROULETTE, a prose (or poem) soliloquy of androgyny also contrives to reach the same effect (but sounds a trifle recondite when contextualizing it under the film's incumbent situation).
Two veterans, Franco Nero is either recording his secret affection in the cabinet or wandering near Querelle from oblique angles; the fading beauty Jeanne Moreau, hums "Each man kills the things he loves", and is lost in her own fantasy of the banquet she can savor.
Personally I incline towards QUERELLE's unconventional approach to kill off the ambiguities of sexual orientation and examine the most primal desire made with blood and flesh, but Chinese ROULETTE achieves another form of success, it maintains a serene aplomb above all the vile assault and bitter turbulence, like the unspecified pistol shot at the coda, no matter who bites the dust, a bullet is never an ultimate solution to all the problems..
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.
Concerning the queerness of the film, i would say that this is something really complex: again, the sexual scene between Querelle and Nono has a sacramental mood, and ritual characteristics - as the assassination of the sailor by Querelle - which make of this scene something else: not only an exposition of human, maybe depraved, desires, but of a desire to reach the unreachable: god or devil, never mind.
I will likely never know the absolute answer to that, but I am willing to bet that past and future viewers will fall into these two groups: Those who feel that unclear character motivations, loosely constructed plot-structure and melodramatically poetic theatrics bespeak a larger sentiment, one not blatantly stated in this film; And the second group, who will leave this viewing experience raising their eye-brows in confusion, and possibly having a good laugh.This film, though wordy, probably operates most effectively in its nonverbal trappings.
The sets have a bourgeois richness that is almost tactile, the direction of movement is staged and coordinated like dance in some scenes, and the lighting is one of the best uses of expressionism out side of the American film noir idiom I've ever seen.The script is an abstract exploration of people's motivations, specifically as they relate to the more carnal side of love, and there is also an underlying, equally abstract, message about the methods and means of self-exploration.
All of this is told from the unique perspective of a naive, amoral young man who is, at the time that this film is set, exploring and learning about himself largely through acts of violence, sex and betrayal.
Brad Davis' acting in the lead role is a strange mixture of stoic detach and reined-in anger/passion and I can not begin to describe it to someone who has not seen the film.This film, in my opinion, can not escape the onus of its "high camp factor", One gets the feeling that this is the stuff that John Waters may have cackled at in his formative years.
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).
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 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.'.
Jean genet and fassbinder at their decadent best.
I found this movie to be very intriguing, and found myself trying to catch all the phallic symbolism on the etched window panes and the writing on the walls of the local W.C. Franco Nero, plays the Lieutenent who is much enamored with Querelle and tapes his longings for him.
Fassbinder's last film is based on what would seem to be an unfilmable 'Querelle de Brest' by Jean Genet, and Genet's only film 'Un Chant D'Amour' must certainly have provided some inspiration for the symbolism of this movie.
With half-naked oiled-up sailors and enormous phallic mooring posts.What on earth Franco Nero and Jeanne Moreau thought they were doing agreeing to take part in this septic tank of a film is quite beyond me.Truly, the worst movie I have ever tried to watch.
Not really a straight adaptation of Genet's work, but as the title says "a film about Jean Genet's 'Querelle De Brest'".
Amidst this increasingly deep mosaic of the characteristics of the human psyche, a wild expressionistic decor and background only adds to the internal structure of what is already an "internal" film.As Fassbinder explores the structure of his homosexuality, one gets the impression that Querelle and Robert (the two brothers) are actually the same person (as suggested in the ending when Lysiane, throwing the Tarot cards, declares that "you don't have a brother, you never really had a brother" amidst a sense of relief in Robert).
The movie deals with a gay named Querelle who has some sort of loathing for his homosexual desires which he takes out on innocent people/his lovers.
It's a good analogy, and for his (regrettably) final feature, Querelle, I suggest it's the sauna- a sauna lit with gaudy orange-yellows and loaded with overly serious homosexual theater patrons with occasional guest stars who should be in better rooms like Jeanne Moreau and Franco Nero.
One can't help but see the passion in the project, an overtly theatrical and artificial film that has the subtitle "A Film About Jean Genet's Querelle".
With this one, Fassbinder takes the sort of tactic Godard did in his later years- the lesser ones, arguably- as a blend develops between title cards, "authoritative" narration not too unlike the sort in Little Children, and an actual (if not very coherent) narrative of a sailor, Querelle, who gets gay sex for the first time, kills his opium dealer, gets embroiled in a mystery involving his boss, and somehow Jeanne Moreau's bar owner keeps an eye over everything more or less in-between her repeated song she sings.That, at least, is as much as I could figure.
I'm actually surprised this hasn't screened as a midnight movie from time to time in New York city, a movie that gay and straight can embrace as a film that is funnier and more ironically quotable than the trashiest melodrama Fassbinder couldn't have tried to concoct of his best day.Yes, Querelle is shot with a painterly eye, and yes its DoP Schwarzenberger provides a few stunning compositions, and then the rest of the time it's just...
Querelle, therefore, depicts an Utopian new world, the word "Utopian" having its proper sense, since: "the Brest, as described by Genet, it a totally invented one, it does not exist at all, except perhaps in a bar in Texas" (Fassbinder, Loc. Cit., p.
-, Fassbinder added that, for the first time in his career, he filmed the whole movie in the studio.
Therefore, it does not astonish that all apocalyptic scenes in Fassbinder's work (e.g. the 14th part of "Berlin Alexanderplatz") are places, where the traces (signs by their very nature) come back to live like it is said to be happen on doomsday.
Amgonst the 66 movies that R.W. Fassbinder made in his only 37 years long life (the single episodes, none of them less than 1 hour, counted as singles), "Querelle", his last work (1982), seems to march to a different drummer.
Fassbinder's Final Film, and Far from his Best.
Went in with high hopes, a fan of Fassbinder's other works, but this is arguably his worst movie.
Perhaps I did not notice the bad acting in his earlier movies (all being in German) but in this film actors give weird, stilted performances.
'Querelle' the sailor is played by Brad Davis and his performance is equally as good as in 'Midnight express'.
Drug-overdosing before release, director Rainer Werner Fassbinder kept his distance.****** Querelle (8/31/82) Rainer Werner Fassbinder ~ Brad Davis, Hanno Poschl, Franco Nero, Jeanne Moreau.
Set piece film, a must see for movie connisseurs.
Querelle played adequately by Davis is a gay sailor, who just arrived at his new port,, starts to frequent this bar, to pick up other sailors and have sex with them.
Franco Nero, as always, is in top form as Querelle's captain, who even he has a thing for Davis, and we have thought provoking points in his words, plus voice overs, from a faceless star, which, a couple of annoying psalms appear on the black screen as we fade into another.
I'm not sure what Rainer Werner Fassbinder was trying to do with this film.
Now I'm not a true art house connoisseur, in fact I have seen very few films in this genre so maybe I am not best paced to review it but I will give it a shot.Brad Davis gives a charismatic performance in the lead role, he manages to look beautiful, innocent and down right grubby at the same time, so well done to him, not easy to do.
The rest of the cast do a good job, I think the trouble is you don't like any of them including Querelle.
Fassbinders last film,not his BEST but will do as a reminder of what he accomplished in his too short career.r..
QUERILLE is based on a novel by Genet.Combining the artistry of Fassbinder & Genet into one film is not easy.The film is a murder mystery,a many part love story (mostly male).
Heath Ledger.Jeanne Moreau gives another excellent performance as the bar Owner.Franco Nero plays the ship officer who is lusting after Querille (Brad Davis).All the other actors are equally excellent.There are a few sex scenes (male-male) they are done with erotic & are in no way offensive.The cinematography is quite abstract with beautiful images almost like paintings.This film is not for all tastes, but for Fassbinder fans it is a must.One more thing, I have viewed this a few times previously and finally understood the song that Jeane Moreau sings throughout the movieRatings: ***1/2 (out of 4) 91 points (out of 100 IMDb 8 (out of 10).