''Querelle'' is a 1982 West German-French English-language

arthouse film An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily f ...

directed by

Rainer Werner Fassbinder Rainer Werner Fassbinder (; 31 May 1945 – 10 June 1982), sometimes credited as R. W. Fassbinder, was a German filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the major figures and catalysts of the New German Cinema movement. Fassbinder's main ...

and starring Brad Davis, adapted from French author

Jean Genet Jean Genet (; – ) was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. In his early life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later became a writer and playwright. His major works include the novels ''The Thief's ...

's 1947 novel ''

Querelle of Brest ''Querelle of Brest'' (french: Querelle de Brest) is a novel by the French writer Jean Genet. It was written mostly in 1945 and first published anonymously in 1947, limited to 460 numbered copies, with illustrations by Jean Cocteau.White, Edmund. ...

''. It was Fassbinder's last film, released shortly after his sudden death in June 1982.

Plot

The plot centers on the handsome Belgian sailor

Georges Querelle Georges "Jo" Querelle () is the protagonist and antihero of Jean Genet's 1947 novel '' Querelle de Brest''. Character overview A sailor on the cargo ship ''Le Vengeur'', Querelle is also a thief, prostitute, opium smuggler, and serial killer. Wh ...

, who is also a thief and

murderer Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person wit ...

. When his ship, ''Le Vengeur'', arrives in

Brest Brest may refer to: Places *Brest, Belarus **Brest Region **Brest Airport **Brest Fortress * Brest, Kyustendil Province, Bulgaria * Břest, Czech Republic *Brest, France ** Arrondissement of Brest **Brest Bretagne Airport ** Château de Brest *Br ...

, 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 works behind the bar and also manages La Feria's underhanded affairs with the assistance of his friend, the corrupt police captain Mario. Querelle makes a deal to sell

opium Opium (or poppy tears, scientific name: ''Lachryma papaveris'') is dried latex obtained from the seed capsules of the opium poppy ''Papaver somniferum''. Approximately 12 percent of opium is made up of the analgesic alkaloid morphine, which i ...

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 Anal sex or anal intercourse is generally the insertion and thrusting of the erect penis into a person's anus, or anus and rectum, for sexual pleasure.Sepages 270–271for anal sex information, anpage 118for information about the clitoris. ...

with Nono first, according to Nono's maxim that "That way, I can say my wife only sleeps with arseholes." Querelle deliberately loses the game, allowing himself to be

sodomized Sodomy () or buggery (British English) is generally Anal sex, anal or oral sex between people, or Human sexual activity, sexual activity between a person and a non-human animal (Zoophilia, bestiality), but it may also mean any non-Reproduction, ...

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 builder, Gil, murders his work mate Theo, who had been harassing and

sexually assaulting Sexual assault is an act in which one intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will. It is a form of sexual violence, which ...

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 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 cleverly arranged it so that the murder of Vic is also blamed on Gil. 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. Later, Seblon reveals his love and concern to a drunken Querelle, and they kiss and embrace before returning to ''Le Vengeur''.

Cast

* Brad Davis as

Querelle ''Querelle'' is a 1982 West German-French English-language arthouse film directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and starring Brad Davis, adapted from French author Jean Genet's 1947 novel ''Querelle of Brest''. It was Fassbinder's last film, rel ...

Franco Nero Francesco Clemente Giuseppe Sparanero (born 23 November 1941), known professionally as Franco Nero, is an Italian actor, producer, and director. His breakthrough role was as the title character in the Spaghetti Western film '' Django'' (1966), ...

as Lieutenant Seblon *

Jeanne Moreau Jeanne Moreau (; 23 January 1928 – 31 July 2017) was a French actress, singer, screenwriter, director, and socialite. She made her theatrical debut in 1947, and established herself as one of the leading actresses of the Comédie-Française. Mo ...

as Lysiane *

Laurent Malet Laurent Marie Guespin-Malet (born 3 September 1955, in Bayonne) is a French actor, and the twin brother of actor Pierre Malet. Life Malet's stage debut came in '' La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu'' as Troilus alongside Claude Jade in 1975. In 1 ...

as Roger Bataille *

Hanno Pöschl Hanno Pöschl (born 2 July 1949 in Vienna, Austria) is an Austrian actor. Pöschl has enjoyed a long and prolific career working with directors Maximilian Schell, Peter Patzak, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Paulus Manker, Richard Linklater, and G ...

as Robert / Gil * Günther Kaufmann as Nono *

Burkhard Driest Burkhard Driest (; 28 April 1939 – 27 February 2020) was a German actor, writer and director, known for his acting work in Sam Peckinpah's '' Cross of Iron'' and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's ''Querelle''. He also wrote novels and screenplays. L ...

as Mario *

Roger Fritz Roger Fritz (22 September 1936 – 26 November 2021) was a German actor, director, producer and photographer, perhaps best known for ''Cross of Iron'', and his work with Rainer Werner Fassbinder in ''Querelle'', ''Lili Marleen'' and '' Berlin Ale ...

as Marcellin *

Dieter Schidor Dieter Schidor (6 March 1948 – 17 September 1987) was a German actor, perhaps best known for his work in Sam Peckinpah's ''Cross of Iron'', and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's ''Querelle''. Dieter Schidor was born on 6 March 1948 in Bienrode, today ...

as Vic Rivette *

Natja Brunckhorst Natja Brunckhorst (born 26 September 1966) is a German actress, screenwriter, and director. Brunckhorst was 13 years old when she was selected by director Uli Edel for the leading role as Christiane F. in the critically acclaimed 1981 dramatisat ...

as Paulette * Werner Asam as Worker *

Axel Bauer Axel Bauer (born 7 April 1961) is a French singer, composer, guitarist, and actor, born in Paris. A figure of the French rock scene, he was discovered in 1983 with the song "Cargo". Several times awarded a gold record, he has sold three million re ...

as Worker * Neil Bell as Theo *

Robert van Ackeren Robert van Ackeren (born 22 December 1946) is a German movie director, actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern ...

as Drunken legionnaire *

Wolf Gremm The wolf (''Canis lupus''; : wolves), also known as the gray wolf or grey wolf, is a large canine native to Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Nort ...

as Drunken legionnaire *

Frank Ripploh Frank Ripploh (September 2, 1949 – June 24, 2002) was a German actor, film director, and author. He is best remembered for his semi-autobiographical 1980 film ''Taxi zum Klo''. The film, produced on a shoestring budget of 100,000 DM, explor ...

as Drunken legionnaire

Production

According to Genet's biographer

Edmund White Edmund Valentine White III (born 1940) is an American novelist, memoirist, playwright, biographer and an essayist on literary and social topics. Since 1999 he has been a professor at Princeton University. France made him (and later ) de l'Ordr ...

, ''Querelle'' was originally going to be made by

Werner Schroeter Werner Schroeter (7 April 1945 – 12 April 2010) was a German film director, screenwriter, and opera director known for his stylistic excess. Schroeter was cited by Rainer Werner Fassbinder as an influence both on his own work and on German cine ...

, with a scenario by

, 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 John Richard Schlesinger (; 16 February 1926 – 25 July 2003) was an English film and stage director. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for ''Midnight Cowboy'', and was nominated for the same award for two other films ('' Darling'' an ...

and

Sam Peckinpah David Samuel Peckinpah (; February 21, 1925 – December 28, 1984) was an American film director and screenwriter. His 1969 Western epic ''The Wild Bunch'' received an Academy Award nomination and was ranked No. 80 on the American Film Institute ...

, 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". 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."White, Edmund. ''Genet: A Biography''. Alfred A. Knopf 1993, pp. 615-616

Soundtrack

* Jeanne Moreau – "Each Man Kills the Things He Loves" (music by

Peer Raben Peer Raben (born Wilhelm Rabenbauer, 3 July 1940 – 21 January 2007) was a German composer who worked with German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Life Raben was born in Viechtafell, Bavaria, and attended Musische Gymnasium Straubing. He died ...

, lyrics from

Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is ...

's poem "

The Ballad of Reading Gaol ''The Ballad of Reading Gaol'' is a poem by Oscar Wilde, written in exile in Berneval-le-Grand, after his release from Reading Gaol () on 19 May 1897. Wilde had been incarcerated in Reading after being convicted of gross indecency with other m ...

") * "Young and Joyful Bandit" (Music by Peer Raben, lyrics by Jeanne Moreau) Both songs were nominated to the 1984 Razzie Awards for "Worst Original Song".

Release

''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. On

review aggregator A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, which categorizes reviews as positive or negative only, the film has an approval rating of 57% calculated based on 14 critics comments. By comparison, with the same opinions being calculated using a

weighted arithmetic mean The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

, the rating is 6.10/10. Writing for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' critic

Vincent Canby Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who served as the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in ...

noted that ''Querelle'' was "a mess...a detour that leads to a dead end." 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." 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."White, Edmund. ''Genet: A Biography''. Alfred A. Knopf 1993, p. 340 Genet, in discussion with Schidor, said that he had not seen the film, commenting "You can't smoke at the movies."

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Querelle 1982 films 1982 drama films 1982 LGBT-related films German drama films German LGBT-related films French drama films French LGBT-related films West German films English-language German films Films directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder Films based on French novels Films shot in Berlin Films set in France Films set in the 1940s German serial killer films English-language French films Jean Genet LGBT-related drama films 1980s English-language films 1980s French films 1980s German films