Production Companies Fox Searchlight Pictures, Hollywood Partners Munich (as Hollywood Partners), Industry Entertainment, Walrus & Associates (as Walrus & Associates Ltd.)
Studio Fox Searchlight, Hollywood Partners, Industry Entertainment, Walrus & Associates
With bedroom eyes and the mischievous smirk of an insatiable roué, Geoffrey Rush is a perfect choice to play the Marquis de Sade in Quills, directed by Philip Kaufman and adapted by Doug Wright from his own stage play. Imprisoned in France's Charenton asylum at the turn of the 18th century, de Sade is a stately court jester in disheveled finery, and Rush imbues the role with the fierce urgency of a writer whose sexual fantasies are his sole remaining defense against repression and hypocrisy. Deprived of quill and ink, he writes with wine, then blood, then his own feces--a descent into madness or an impassioned refusal to be silenced? Quills embraces freedom of expression ("such beauty, such abomination," as one character notes) while affirming that all freedoms have a price.
De Sade smuggles manuscripts out of Charenton with help from Madeleine (Kate Winslet), a virginal laundress who relishes de Sade's scandalous prose--a divine irony since she was taught to read by asylum abbé Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix), whose desire for Madeleine is suppressed by Catholic propriety. The delicate dynamic of this trio is shattered by the arrival of Royer-Collard (Michael Caine, appearing somewhat comatose), a righteous hypocrite appointed to silence de Sade once and for all. It's all very engrossing as a piece of theater (which it still is, despite Kaufman's elegant filming), and although Wright's literate dialogue limits de Sade to zesty ripostes and sneering perversity, Rush's intensity ensures that the marquis's plight is no laughing matter. Quills has a point, makes it without condescension, and knows the difference between madness and passion. --Jeff Shannon
2.
You are about to embark on a gothic tale of virtue and vice, of comedy and terror, of love and shocking erotica, of brutal censorship and, ultimately, the uncrushable spirit of the human imagination.
Be forewarned. This is the imagined story of the final days of the Marquis De Sade, the writer, rebel and sensualist who explored the darkest, even criminal, impulses of human passions and was proclaimed at once among the most devilish monsters and the freest spirits the world has known.
Historical biographies tell us that in the Marquis' last decade, the man whose name was synonymous with sadistic lust fell in love, and that the maverick libertine who celebrated expression at all costs was almost silenced. Banished to the Charenton Asylum for the insane, the Marquis De Sade continued to write his blasphemous novels . . . until a new doctor was brought in to "cure" him of his wicked desires.
But where history leaves off, QUILLS sets out on a daring journey into the corridors of Charenton Asylum and deep inside the Marquis De Sade's forbidden cell, in which everything but the very act of creation could be caged. Director PHILIP KAUFMAN ("The Right Stuff," "The Unbearable Lightness of Being") brings to life the Marquis De Sade's seductive, sinister world with a cautionary tale about what happens to the light of Charenton when the doctors attempt to shut out the darkness. The screenplay is by DOUG WRIGHT, based on his award-winning play which was acclaimed by critics not only as a provocative comedic thriller but as a modern metaphor about freedom of expression and civil liberties.
Academy Award winner GEOFFREY RUSH stars as the witty yet wicked Marquis De Sade, who is living in exile in his own posh suite at the Charenton Asylum. Here, he has befriended the progressive young asylum director Abbe Coulmier (JOAQUIN PHOENIX), a man ahead of his times, who believes in treating his patients humanely, providing means for creative expression. In this atmosphere, the Marquis has also found it easy to strike up a friendship with the comely young laundress Madeleine (KATE WINSLET), who helps him to smuggle out his prolific writings for publication and whose innocent affections are equally enjoyed by the conflicted Abbe.
Then Charenton gets a new chief physician, Dr. Royer-Collard (Academy Award winner MICHAEL CAINE), who has been commissioned by Emperor Napoleon himself to cure the Marquis De Sade and stop the flow of his pen forever. Charenton soon erupts not only in a battle between doctor and patient, but between art and censorship, libido and inhibition, morality and brutality, passion and persecution.
For it seems the more the Marquis De Sade is prevented from expression, the more he is provoked . . .
3.
Deep in the corridors of the Charenton Asylum, past the giggles of madmen and the clanking of chains, a writer sits, penning page after page of incendiary prose. Stories so erotic, so deeply perverse, that Napoleon himself issues an order to silence the man at any cost. The writer's name? The Marquis de Sade.
The notorious Marquis (GEOFFREY RUSH) whose blasphemous writings are encouraged by a God-fearing priest, Abbe de Coulmier (JOAQUIN PHOENIX), who believes in curing the insane through his humanistic principles. As Coulmier urges him to write, "to purge his evil thoughts upon the page," an adoring chamber maid, Madeleine LeClerc (KATE WINSLET) abets the Marquis' cause and smuggles the scandalous writings out of the asylum for publication. Both risk everything for this wicked genius, until a new doctor (MICHAEL CAINE) arrives at Charenton hell-bent on "curing" the Marquis of his nasty writing habit by any means necessary.
4.
Oscar winner Geoffrey Rush gives a tour-de-force performance as history's most infamous sexual adventurer, the Marquis de Sade, a nobleman with a literary flair. The Marquis lives in a madhouse where a beautiful laundry maid (Kate Winslet) smuggles his erotic stories to a printer, defying orders form the asylum's resident priest (Joaquin Phoenix). The titillating passages whip all of France into sexual frenzy, until a fiercely conservative doctor (Michael Caine) tries to put an end to the fun, inadvertently stoking the excitement to a fever pitch.
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