QUILLS (2000) ***1/2

Reviewed 11/21/00

Director Philip Kaufman's past films depicting eroticism like The Unbearable Lightness of Being and Henry and June were good primers for Quills, a more or less fictional account of a romanticized Marquis de Sade's struggle to express himself while held captive in Charenton Asylum. With Doug Wright adapting from his own play, Quills remains deliberately stagy, but Kaufman's near-operatic black comic style fits the material.

Sade's "Justine," smuggled out of the asylum and published, makes its way to the attention of then Emperor of France, Napoleon, who decides he simply must listen to the very end of a particular raunchy episode in the book before judging it sacrilege. Enter Dr. Royer-Collard (Michael Caine), an ends-justify-the-means type of guy assigned to rehabilitate the Marquis of his perversions. However, the more draconian his opponent becomes, the more the charismatic Sade (Geoffrey Rush) resists. At first, the compassionate Abbé de Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix), who runs Charenton, tries to protect Sade, but the Marquis' belligerence finally leaves the chambermaid Madeleine (Kate Winslet) his sole ally.

Within Quills is a critique of the ageless conflict between puritanical fascism and the autonomy of expression. Like films of recent years The People vs. Larry Flint and South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Quills sides with expression. In its argument, Quills is unafraid to examine the tragic results the provocation Sade's expression might take while rightfully complicating its blameworthiness. Words alone can not kill, but neither are they without effect.

Quills boasts three of the best actors today in Geoffrey Rush, Kate Winslet, and Joaquin Phoenix, and all three are expectedly extraordinary here. Rush chews up the scenery, emanating acumen, charm, and vitality. Kate Winslet plunges into her role, essentially an innocent who takes devilish delight out of being a catalyst for taboo-breaking without being the taboo-breaker herself. Phoenix does another complete transformation in his latest incarnation, going from ruthless villainy in this year's Gladiator to pious devotion here, but it is a devotion fraught with sexual temptation in the form of Madeleine. Only Michael Caine does not transcend his role as the simply evil antagonist. Playing Royer-Collard's young wife, Simone, Amelia Warner's luminous beauty is perfect for the part, but her character's rapid and unhesitant transformation from chastity into hedonism is entirely contrived.

Occasionally, Kaufman's style veers too far over the top and the film has an all-too neat literary-style ending, but Quills has much more to recommend than dismiss. Peter Boyle's editing is extremely effective. Particularly notable is a cut in which Coulmier mistakens another chambermaid for Madeleine and another in which Coulmier begins to pursue an anguished Madeleine through hanging laundry but is stopped dead in his tracks by the sight of others. Kaufman sets up one striking set piece after another. In one, Sade directs a play performed by the inmates to parody Royer-Collard's marriage to his wife. It has a controlled buildup that maximizes tension and hilarity. In another, asylum inmates relay and gradually change a tale told by the imprisoned Sade across a row of rooms to Madeleine who transcribes it. Kaufman includes a shot to the hall outside as the voices bounce off one another with a rabid frenzy.

You won't learn much about the real Marquis de Sade in Quills, but in this myth is an entertainment matched by a prescience for conditions continuing in present day whether that subject be Andres Serrano, Sally Mann, or Hollywood itself.