Interesteg What makes it different from others?

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Sabah Hensley This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

MisterWhiplash Rainer Werner Fassbinder once said that his oeuvre should be considered like that of a house, some parts are staircases and walls, other parts plumbing, but it should be considered a sturdy house. 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. It ends up being some fun being in the room, but for completely all the wrong reasons. And, indeed, you may be totally befuddled by the look and feel of the sauna, with its stultifying heat making one feel, ultimately, more dull than dramatically engaged. It was also created in those final days of Fassbinder's, as a bloated coke-head who just earlier that year burned through one of his very best productions (Veronika Voss) only to, finally, burn out completely.Maybe Neil Young was wrong in his song, about the burn vs. rust, though in Fassbinder's case it was the only way. 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". Genet, of course, was a scandalous poet/playwright in France, and he's inspired a few movies in his time. 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 really did want to give this a fair shot. I had read some negative reviews, but as well I read Marcel Carne's praise at the Venice film festival, that it would have a place in the HISTORY of CINEMA- in BOLD no less. And it's not even the homosexuality on display in and of itself that is a deterrent. It's the way Fassbinder goes about it; everything is so *serious*, so much without a hint of humor, that for a while I ended up straining to keep my eyes open. Brad Davis, and I'm not exaggerating in this description, is absolutely atrocious. He attempts to 'emote', but is so stilted and without any real trace of actual human sensitivity or connection to the other actors that he's like a slab of SPAM. Others like Gunther Kaufmann (in give or take a dozen Fassbinders) and the aforementioned Moreau and Nero are basically left to fend for their own devices... which aren't many, even with the oddly hypnotic Moreau.Ultimately, however, the film started to turn into something I didn't expect: camp. Oh man, is this a hoot of an art-house movie! There is a point, about two-thirds of the way through the running time, that the onslaught of completely useless narration- yeah, we get it, it's "about" the play, but why should we care the descriptions if we don't care about the actual empty-ass character- and deranged poetry of the title cards gets too much on top of the already inane, dead-pan dialog. 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... a dying fish of a movie. It's tail keeps flapping around and making movements, and it's a shame to realize that it will soon die by the end of the movie - and be the end of one of the most remarkable careers in modern cinema. Disappointment is putting it lightly.

T Y Querelle is an erotic fable about several closeted tough guys loitering around the French Navy port Brest, in some indeterminate timeframe. In a go-for-broke concept, Q shines a spotlight on the latent homosexuality in supposedly straight activities like the military, gambling, fighting, ports-of-call, whore-houses, etc.. It has more fetish imagery for gay men than Ben Hur or the Ten Commandments.Basically five or six male figures ponder, intellectualize and ruminate themselves into and out of mechanical couplings. Genet's fringe figures (...the most verbal, stylized brutes ever) wrestle with their suppressed homosexual urges, but remain inactive until a suitable pretext can be found to copulate with the guy who's driving them to distraction, or, (just as good) till they find some criminal outlet to discharge their energy. It's all loosely strung together by an occasional narrator who's a few mint juleps away from a coma. It's as fragmented as Petronius' Satyricon, and Genet himself, writing from prison, was always a million analytical miles away from his own experiences. It's no surprise that a Genet film has problems with forward momentum and bogs down in ideas: weird, erotic, complex and spiritual. With the amount of time you'd need to spend viewing and re-viewing this incoherent movie to get something out of it, why not read the book?Even if you can get past the artifice of the unsubtle stage set (with its faux-masonry phalluses), this would still be over the top; as campy as humanly possible because the acting has been taken to such a strange level of abstraction. "A" will overtly tell "B" what B's backstory and emotional temperament are, as an odd way to get info to the audience ...and the story still ends up emotionally and psychologically diffuse. It feels like a half-hearted dress rehearsal, where everyone has been told to suppress all hints of their motivations.You could find any number of things here to mock, but for me Brad Davis' bloodless line readings are toxic. Kudos to him for taking on such a difficult project, but as the central figure, his muted performance is just too flat to hold the movie together. His entire audition may have consisted of the single line, "Could you oil up and try on this tank top?" It's a mystery why Rocky Horror became a cult movie with lines shouted back at its absurdities, but this didn't. (...guy in dragon-lady drag? check! ...twinkie in Shirley Temple wig? 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. It expects a certain maturity from an audience, to grapple with its dense weave of sexual ideas, but it's also pretty darned silly on its face. You can explore the transcendent aspects of sex and crime by entering Genet's world, or you could just go have some forbidden sex and rob a convenience store ...then ruminate.

Jay Harris 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). Absract images bordering on being psychedelic.The acting by all is low key & excellent. The main known actors are Brad Davis (he died a few years later from the ravages of AIDS). He was an exceptional actor & is very well missed. We lost this year another actor who had them same superb acting chops. 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)

Dornier Trappatoni 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. The chain of events which both leads and follows Querelle are surreal and fantastic. The theatrical tone over the picture only adds to the strong sensation of human behavior on the limit of madness and passion. Very demanding and interesting. Brad Davis is flawless in his portrayal of the lonely sailor. Burkhard Driest is also absolutely cut out for his sleazy yet fascinating character- a bribed and dirty cop who befriends Querelle not knowing that the sailor is responsible for the crimes he is investigating.