Querelle (1982, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) (Patreon)

48/100

Weds dazzling formal artifice to one of my least favorite subjects, sexual domination/masochism. As adapted here, at least, Genet's narrative and characters and taboo-violations interest me not one iota; Querelle serves as a hollow object of universal desire, tiresome even in his motiveless cruelty, and he's surrounded by various lost souls driven wholly by a raging or fading libido. Admittedly, some specifically queer comedy, e.g. Gil professing his horniness for (the never-seen) Paulette while practically humping Roger, purring "Can you imagine how I'd fuck her if I held her like I'm holding you now?", probably plays funnier to wholly sympatico viewers than it does to me. Even in hetero relationships, though, "I will utterly debase myself to be with you" reliably makes me switch right off. Querelle serves up half a dozen variations on that dynamic and little else. (I confess that the fraternal angle never made any sense to me, least of all at the end when it's suddenly and to my mind pointlessly negated.) Furthermore, despite sporting what qualifies, for Fassbinder, as an all-star international cast—Jeanne Moreau! Franco Nero! uh, Brad Davis!—this ranks among his worst-acted features, with every actor coming across as uncomfortably stilted to a degree that the film's deliberately synthetic context fails to justify. (Notable exception: the narrator, who's not credited onscreen nor anywhere else that I can find, oddly enough. Second-finest omniscient voice I've ever heard, after John Hurt in Dogville.) Maybe I'd feel similarly about other Fassbinder films if I spoke German, but I doubt it. Putting a dreamy spin on "You have a solid, heavy, massive prick. Not elegant, but strong" is challenging in any language, and I do respect the hell out of Moreau for trying.

So, a painful experience, then? Not to my eyeballs. Fassbinder's vision for Querelle hits the hybrid cinematic-theatrical sweet spot that dispenses with naturalism in a manner suited for the stage while employing the camera to marvelous effect. (Were the narration relentless rather than intermittent, you could throw "literary" in there for the hat trick, à la Wes' Roald Dahl shorts.) Sets look explicitly like sets. Characters stand before a gigantic painted sun. Most shots are suffused in what I've just learned is an orange glow, though it looks more sulfurous-yellow to me (colorblindness takes odd forms); occasionally, an actor will move a short distance from one hue into another, Sirk-style. Fassbinder also repeats a striking trick that I believe he used extensively in Berlin Alexanderplatz (if not, I'm remembering it from another film toward the end of his career), somehow creating a diaphanous scrim that gives the impression of rooms filled with some substance that isn't quite smoke but has similar characteristics. It's like...I dunno, if jewels were a barely visible aerosol. Dick jokes aren't my thing, so I could lived without the hotel's almost literally phallic turrets or whatever they're supposed to be (see accompanying still above), but this is otherwise a visual feast that, along with Lola's bold colors and Veronika Voss' expressionistic monochrome lighting, suggests that we lost a period of truly exciting experimentation when he died. Wish that were sufficient to stave off tedium, but watching Querelle, for me, is like listening to a world-class symphony orchestra play Limp Bizkit's greatest hits. 

Amusing sidenote: Every actor pronounces "Querelle" French-style, without the "kw" sound, so it constantly sounds as if they're referring to Steve Carell.