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Querelle
Querelle
	Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Screenplay by	Rainer Werner Fassbinder; Burkhard Driest
Based on	Querelle of Brest; by Jean Genet
Produced by	Michael McLernon; Dieter Schidor; Sam Waynberg
Starring	Brad Davis; Franco Nero; Jeanne Moreau; Laurent Malet; Hanno Pöschl
Cinematography	Xaver Schwarzenberger
Edited by	Juliane Lorenz
Music by	Peer Raben
Production; company	Gaumont S.A. Paris
Distributed by	Scotia (West Germany); Gaumont Distribution (France)
Release dates	August 1982 (Montreal); 8 September 1982 (France); 16 September 1982 (West Germany);
Running time	108 minutes
Countries	West Germany; France
Language	English
Budget	DEM4 million

Querelle is a 1982 English-language arthouse film directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The film stars Brad Davis and was adapted from French author Jean Genet's 1947 novel Querelle of Brest. The plot centers on the Belgian sailor Georges Querelle, who is both a thief and murderer. It was Fassbinder's last film, released shortly after his death at the age of 37.

Plot

When Belgian sailor Georges Querelle's ship, Le Vengeur, arrives in Brest, he visits the Feria, a bar and brothel for sailors run by 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 works behind the bar and also manages La Feria's illicit affairs with the assistance of his friend Mario, the corrupt police captain.

Querelle makes a deal to sell opium to Nono. During the execution of the deal, he murders his accomplice Vic by slitting his throat. 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 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, according to Nono's maxim: "That way, I can say my wife only sleeps with arseholes." 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. Afterwards, Querelle has sex with Mario.

Back on the ship we discover a builder, Gil, murders his work mate Theo, who had been harassing and sexually assaulting him. 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 escape. 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 cleverly arranged it so that the murder of Vic is also blamed on Gil.

A perennial undercurrent in the film is that Querelle's superior, Lieutenant Seblon, 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.

The film ends with the sailors aboard Le Vengeur, presumably about to leave port. A heartbroken Lysiane, spurned by Querelle, conducts a tarot reading for Robert: she realizes that he and Querelle were never brothers after all. As Lysiane laughs maniacally, we see Querelle's birth record transcribed on-screen.

Cast

Brad Davis as Querelle
Franco Nero as Lieutenant Seblon
Jeanne Moreau as Lysiane
Laurent Malet as Roger Bataille
Hanno Pöschl as Robert / Gil
Günther Kaufmann as Nono
Burkhard Driest as Mario
Roger Fritz as Marcellin
Dieter Schidor as Vic Rivette
Natja Brunckhorst as Paulette
Werner Asam as Worker
Axel Bauer as Worker
Neil Bell as Theo
Robert van Ackeren as Drunken legionnaire
Wolf Gremm as Drunken legionnaire
Frank Ripploh as Drunken legionnaire

Production

According to Genet's biographer Edmund White, Querelle was originally going to be made by Werner Schroeter, with a scenario by Burkhard Driest, and produced by Dieter Schidor. However, Schidor could not find the money to finance a film by Schroeter, and therefore turned to other directors, including John Schlesinger and Sam Peckinpah, before finally settling on Fassbinder. Driest wrote a radically different script for Fassbinder, who then "took the linear narrative and jumbled it up". White quotes Schidor as saying "Fassbinder did something totally different, he took the words of Genet and tried to meditate on something other than the story. The story became totally unimportant for him. He also said publicly that the story was a sort of third-rate police story that wouldn't be worth making a movie about without putting a particular moral impact into it".^[2]

Schroeter had wanted to make a black and white film with amateur actors and location shots, but Fassbinder instead shot it with professional actors in a lurid, expressionist color, and on sets in the studio. Edmund White comments that the result is a film in which, "Everything is bathed in an artificial light and the architectural elements are all symbolic."^[2]

Stylistically, the film is inspired heavily by the works of erotic artist Tom of Finland. Besides costume design and hair styles, actors were posed in silhouettes and scenarios common to Tom Of Finland artwork. "The director Rainer Werner Fassbinder took obvious cues from Tom of Finland in his 1982 film adaptation of Jean Genet’s novel Querelle. As the eponymous lead, actor Brad Davis was Tom’s sailor come to life."^[3]

Soundtrack

Jeanne Moreau – "Each Man Kills the Things He Loves" (music by Peer Raben, lyrics from Oscar Wilde's poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol")
"Young and Joyful Bandit" (Music by Peer Raben, lyrics by Jeanne Moreau)

Release

Released after the death of the director, Querelle sold more than 100,000 tickets in the first three weeks after its release in Paris, the first time that a film with a gay theme had achieved such success.^[2] On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, which categorizes reviews as positive or negative only, the film has an approval rating of 65% calculated based on 17 critics comments. By comparison, with the same opinions being calculated using a weighted arithmetic mean, the rating is 6.30/10.^[4] Writing for The New York Times critic Vincent Canby noted that Querelle was "a mess...a detour that leads to a dead end."^[5] Penny Ashbrook calls Querelle Fassbinder's "perfect epitaph: an intensely personal statement that is the most uncompromising portrayal of gay male sensibility to come from a major filmmaker."^[6] Edmund White considers Querelle the only film based on Genet's book that works, calling it "visually as artificial and menacing as Genet's prose."^[7] Genet, in discussion with Schidor, said that he had not seen the film, commenting "You can't smoke at the movies."^[2]

References

^ "Querelle (18)". British Board of Film Classification. 27 July 1983. Retrieved 29 May 2013.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d White, Edmund. Genet: A Biography. Alfred A. Knopf 1993, pp. 615-616
^ Tierney, Paul. "TOM OF FINLAND: Light and shade". TOM OF FINLAND FOUNDATION. TOM OF FINLAND FOUNDATION. Retrieved 6 March 2024.
^ "Querelle". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 26 November 2024.
^ Canby, Vincent (29 April 1983). "Fassbinder's Last". The New York Times.
^ Penny Ashbrook (1993). Gilbert, Harriet (ed.). The Sexual Imagination: From Acker to Zola. London: Jonathan Cape. p. 87. ISBN 0-224-03535-5.
^ White, Edmund. Genet: A Biography. Alfred A. Knopf 1993, p. 340