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The reputation of the Marquis de Sade has undergone a renaissance of some sorts in the last 20-30 years. A man whose works were officially banned in France well until the 1960s and whose name is used to describe a particularly corrosive form of sexuality, the Marquis de Sade has, in recent decades, also become a symbol for the freedom of expression and the power of transgression. So it should be no surprise that a big-budget and quite favorable cinematic exploration of the Marquis de Sade's life, has arrived in the theaters.

Quills focuses on Sade's final years, when he was committed to the Charenton Asylum, an institution for the mentally ill and others whom society wished to shun. But the Marquis was hardly silenced by this action. Provided with a spacious "cell" and enough writing material, he continued to write his starkly sexual material, an activity that was funded by his devoted wife.

The film opens, after a brief but gruesome guillotine sequence, with a young chambermaid named Madeleine (played by Kate Winslet) smuggling out the Marquis de Sade's latest tome in a basket of unwashed linen. Apparently, this virginal young woman has taken a liking to the Marquis and is devoting herself to the dangerous task of helping publish his works. Soon, she's not just standing outside his door but visiting his quarters, where he demands a kiss for each page of his writing.

Madeleine isn't the only one conversing with the Marquis. Abbe Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix), the priest who's benevolently in charge of the asylum, is actively interested in Sade's redemption. He sees the writing as an "essential factor in his recovery, a purgative for the toxins in his mind." Little does he know that this "therapeutic" act is causing a sensation on the streets of Paris, where crowds eagerly gather together to hear the wicked words while Napoleon himself is repulsed. 

Soon, Dr. Royer-Collard (Michael Caine), who takes a much less favorable view of the Marquis's chances of rehabilitation, is assigned to oversee the institution. The removal of Sade's beloved quills and ink is no large obstacle for Sade, however. He just merely uses whatever else he can find: a chicken bone and spilled wine, later a broken mirror and his own blood and, finally, feces smeared on a prison wall. The movie, directed by Philip Kaufman (Unbearable Lightness of Being), does a fantastic job of taking what is usually an abstract and solitary process (the act of writing) and infusing it with a sensuality that makes the Marquis's obsessions seem both powerful and completely understandable.

Much of the credit has to go to Geoffrey Rush (Shine), who plays Sade with tremendous vigor. Perfectly conveying the Marquis de Sade's voracious appetites, Rush also humanizes his character while never losing sight of the perversion which drives him. Of course, perversion has become a slippery target in our day, with most forms of sexuality celebrated in our exhibitionist culture. Quills, being a product of its time, embraces most of those forms, though it downplays the Marquis's trademark violence and rains down scorn on Royer-Collard's own sexual proclivities (he's married a gorgeous but very innocent 16-year-old girl named Simone). It will be interesting to see what a Sade biopic looks like in 40 years--which aspects of his life are honored, which are pilloried.

If you ignore the strawman villain--even Michael Caine's fabulous performance can't overcome the doctor's barbaric practices and hypocritical nature--Quills actually raises some interesting questions: What is the relationship of words and actions? Does the act of thinking or reading or seeing make us to want to do what we've been contemplating? How related are the libertine's hedonism and the conservative's repression?

Rather than offering simple answers to these complicated questions, Quills portrays competing and often contradictory outcomes. Madeleine, who is the movie's most sympathetic character, remarks "some things belong on paper, some in life, and it's a blessed fool who can't tell the difference." But for Sade, his words are merely sublimated actions, and Simone becomes a ravenous seeker of pleasure after reading Sade's Justine. Later in the film, Madeleine protests to the priest that her fantasies help purge her wickedness: "If I wasn't such a bad woman on the page, I couldn't be such a good woman in life." But one of Sade's stories, related to the other
inmates through cracks in the wall, is the catalyst for a fire that burns down the asylum and the brutal murder of one of the film's characters. Thankfully, the movie doesn't argue, as so many film directors hypocritically do, that words and art have no impact on how people think or act, but instead offers a provocative combination of possibilities.

Unfortunately, not all of the film is so nuanced. The final 25 minutes are over-the-top in all the wrong ways, as the inmates literally take control of the asylum, Sade turns into a martyred hero, and the priest and doctor become caricatures of weakness and brutality, respectively. That, in the end, Sade is shown as a heroic figure or that his words are far more powerful than that of the priest's should come as no surprise from a Hollywood production, but did it have to be so obvious? 

Much more subtle is the fine array of acting performances. Besides the aforementioned standouts of Rush and Caine, Kate Winslet (Titanic) gives another solid performance, despite being forced to wear a push-up bra that magnifies her already ample assets. Joaquin Phoenix (The Yards) is also good as the understanding priest, though why the National Board of Review honored him for Best Supporting Actor is beyond me. That it honored Quills as Best Film of the year is slightly more understandable--the movie is lush to look at and is a passionate defender of freedom of expression--though still misguided. Quills is a provocative look at the Marquis de Sade's final years, full of both virtues and flaws.

J. Robert Parks 1/20/2001