The year is 1794. Throughout France, aristocratic families and citizens live in fear of robbery, imprisonment, and near-daily public executions. The Marquis de Sade watches from a prison window as twenty-three prisoners are executed for the enjoyment of a blood-thirsty mob. His plays and novels depicting sadomasochistic acts have been condemned for immorality—and even worse, for having been written by a nobleman.
Quills is a historical fiction dramatizing this period in the marquis’s life. The Marquis de Sade (Geoffrey Rush) has been imprisoned at the Charenton Asylum, where he lives comfortably under the benevolent rule of the Abbe de Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix). He continues to publish anonymously from within the asylum, aided by a chambermaid, Madeleine (Kate Winslet), who sneaks his manuscripts under the dirty linens. His latest novel, Justine, is so immoral that it has attracted the attention of Napoleon, who has dispatched Dr. Royer-Collard (Michael Caine), a respected physician specializing in near-drowning and other gruesome therapies, to travel to Charenton to oversee the treatment of the marquis. Unfortunately, Royer-Collard has plans of his own regarding Charenton.
Quills, written by Doug Wright and directed by Philip Kauffman (Henry and June) has been much touted as a manifesto of free speech and "the incendiary power of ideas." Wright does present defenses of pornography (depiction of violent sexual activity) that are interesting. He is most successful in demonstrating that censorship is illogical when the marquis’s work is compared with the violence and sexuality sanctioned by the state, by the medical community, and by the public. Although the characters say little about the turn-of-the-century political upheavels in France, scars of the Terror are everywhere; on the blood-stained stairs in Royer-Collard’s house, in the watchful atmosphere of the asylum, and in the marquis’s tortured mind.
Every tragedy from Shakespeare forward needs a comic foil, and in Quills we have Royer-Collard’s wife Simone, a young orphan who makes an afternoon trip from nunnery to marriage bed, a statuette of the Virgin clutched under her arm. This real-life story of cruelly despoiled innocence inspires shock, sexual arousal, and finally the wicked pen of the marquis. The result is "The Crimes of Love," a farce featuring approximately three lines of dialogue and graphic sexual acts. In one of the most bizarre sequences of this film, asylum inmates perform "Crimes" to the howling delight of respectable community members.
Many of the arguments are spelled out during interchanges between the marquis and Coulmier. Unfortunately, their sparring is often repetitive and artificial, and what is supposed to be sexual tension is sadly unconvincing. Furthermore, Wright dismisses the idea that violent literature can contribute to societal attitudes towards violence, and trivializes violence committed in the development of pornographic literature (in Wright’s script, the marquis has been convicted of mutilating a prostitute). This is somewhat disingenuous, considering modern-day research suggesting that people exposed to violence in words or images are more likely to commit or sanction violence themselves, in a script that otherwise aspires to being modern and forward-thinking. This becomes painfully obvious after the murder of an asylum employee by an inmate, who has performed numerous acts of sexual aggression, coincidentally after exposure to de Sade’s pornographic literature. Instead of confronting this issue honestly, Wright conveniently substitutes a hypocritical villain in the person of Royer-Collard.
But in the words of the fictional marquis, "It’s a fiction, not a moral treatise." The direction is excellent, supplemented by a witty but never burdensome musical score. Phoenix is good as the idealistic and conflicted Abbe, and shares many poignant scenes with Winslet and Rush (when the marquis isn’t trying to get him into the sack). The Charenton inmates are skillfully performed, if caricatures, especially the pyromaniacal Dauphin. Geoffrey Rush is an absorbing presence, a treat to watch from his first scene to his last. In his capable hands, the marquis is a fascinating, fallible human being. This reviewer’s advice: go see it, immediately.
