'Quills' is subversive in at least one way. With its archly quaint title, its literary and historical subject matter, directed by a renowned adapter of books, and featuring a cast of heritage/theatre luminaries, 'Quills' seems like it might be the perfect night out for those bourgeoisie normally antipathetic to the mind-numbing populism of the cinema. Such a pedigree might suggest lavish country houses, costumes and decor; large-scale set-pieces; ripe, theatrical acting and choice lines of dialogue; in a word, CULTURE.
And 'Quills' dutifully provides all these pleasures. Except the country houses, costumes and decor all all dirty, shabby, dilapidated; the set-pieces are as full of unrestrained bodily functions, noise and gaudy cruelty as the grossest gross-out comedy; the acting is a little too collusive in the general poor taste, and the clever lines are not averse to 'Carry On'-style singles entendres.
I look at some of these scenes - the glorious, shocking opening, where a typically Sadean fantasy of sexual deviance is revealed to be a historically verifiable orgy of legally- and politically-sanctioned execution; or the wonderful satire put on by de Sade and the inmates of Charenton mocking Royer-Collard, the scientific 'expert'/sadist sent to cure the writer, full of a disturbing, forthright vigour that easily crosses 'low' comedy with 'high' art, connecting it with Moliere, up to films like 'Les Bronzes' in French culture, but not what one would find in a heritage movie like 'Jean de Florette'; or the magnificent faecal mural in which de sade finally bridges the mind/body divide that has bothered philosophers for centuries; I look at scenes like these and I think of the merchantivory admirer who had expected an evening of literary tastefulness, and I thrill.
'Quills'' pleasures are not purely negative. One of its motifs is that of circulation, the way a work of art is produced and disseminated in a certain culture in a particular historical period - a series of Chinese whispers from cell to furtive bookselling in the case of 'Justine'; or the spontaneous creation of a short story transmitted by intermediary prisoners from author to amanuensis, a process that distorts the 'purity' of the work, as lines are misheard by the messengers, but also embodying its spirit (sic), its impulse of freedom in the most oppressive imprisonment (literal and spiritual); as well as the transformation of aristocratic authority by the people.
Barthes once proclaimed the death of the author, and this is exemplified in the film's most horrific scene, where Madeleine is murdered by a madman brought to a pitch by de Sade's story; the latter's work is literally out of his hands; his authority, as well as authoriality, is seized in a grotesque perversion of the Revolution, a revolution itself perverted into a condition of which Charenton is only a heightened symptom.
These channels of dissemination and information are like the arteries of the body, de Sade's words the lifeblood that keeps his society from becoming stagnant - so that writing with his own blood and worse is a logical conclusion. These systems offer a distorting mirror to the more stagnant channels of power, the body politic, which run from petty Emperor (in the film's funniest scene) to brutal cell warder, crushing spirit, individuality, creation, subversion, the latter celebrated in the escape of Simone; if we think this is too simplistic, than it is balanced by Madeleine's fate.
A script run on clever dialogue and eye-catching acting alone can't sustain itself for very long, and the pace flags about halfway through. Fans of 'The Right Stuff', one of the great movies of the 1980s, will be pleased to note that Kauffman has recaptured that film's cartoon style, its lurches of tone between comedy and horror, frivolity and seriousness; but the frequent breaks for didactic dialogues (about, snore, art, censorship, liberty etc.) and unsubtle ironies don't help. The vision of this kind of France, grinding towards inertia, is rarely shown in heritage cinema, usually explored by left-fielders like Rollin and Borowczyk. Some people dismiss them as pornographers as well.
And 'Quills' dutifully provides all these pleasures. Except the country houses, costumes and decor all all dirty, shabby, dilapidated; the set-pieces are as full of unrestrained bodily functions, noise and gaudy cruelty as the grossest gross-out comedy; the acting is a little too collusive in the general poor taste, and the clever lines are not averse to 'Carry On'-style singles entendres.
I look at some of these scenes - the glorious, shocking opening, where a typically Sadean fantasy of sexual deviance is revealed to be a historically verifiable orgy of legally- and politically-sanctioned execution; or the wonderful satire put on by de Sade and the inmates of Charenton mocking Royer-Collard, the scientific 'expert'/sadist sent to cure the writer, full of a disturbing, forthright vigour that easily crosses 'low' comedy with 'high' art, connecting it with Moliere, up to films like 'Les Bronzes' in French culture, but not what one would find in a heritage movie like 'Jean de Florette'; or the magnificent faecal mural in which de sade finally bridges the mind/body divide that has bothered philosophers for centuries; I look at scenes like these and I think of the merchantivory admirer who had expected an evening of literary tastefulness, and I thrill.
'Quills'' pleasures are not purely negative. One of its motifs is that of circulation, the way a work of art is produced and disseminated in a certain culture in a particular historical period - a series of Chinese whispers from cell to furtive bookselling in the case of 'Justine'; or the spontaneous creation of a short story transmitted by intermediary prisoners from author to amanuensis, a process that distorts the 'purity' of the work, as lines are misheard by the messengers, but also embodying its spirit (sic), its impulse of freedom in the most oppressive imprisonment (literal and spiritual); as well as the transformation of aristocratic authority by the people.
Barthes once proclaimed the death of the author, and this is exemplified in the film's most horrific scene, where Madeleine is murdered by a madman brought to a pitch by de Sade's story; the latter's work is literally out of his hands; his authority, as well as authoriality, is seized in a grotesque perversion of the Revolution, a revolution itself perverted into a condition of which Charenton is only a heightened symptom.
These channels of dissemination and information are like the arteries of the body, de Sade's words the lifeblood that keeps his society from becoming stagnant - so that writing with his own blood and worse is a logical conclusion. These systems offer a distorting mirror to the more stagnant channels of power, the body politic, which run from petty Emperor (in the film's funniest scene) to brutal cell warder, crushing spirit, individuality, creation, subversion, the latter celebrated in the escape of Simone; if we think this is too simplistic, than it is balanced by Madeleine's fate.
A script run on clever dialogue and eye-catching acting alone can't sustain itself for very long, and the pace flags about halfway through. Fans of 'The Right Stuff', one of the great movies of the 1980s, will be pleased to note that Kauffman has recaptured that film's cartoon style, its lurches of tone between comedy and horror, frivolity and seriousness; but the frequent breaks for didactic dialogues (about, snore, art, censorship, liberty etc.) and unsubtle ironies don't help. The vision of this kind of France, grinding towards inertia, is rarely shown in heritage cinema, usually explored by left-fielders like Rollin and Borowczyk. Some people dismiss them as pornographers as well.