Back To Index Quills
 Barnes & Noble Academy Award winner Geoffrey Rush deserves another gold statuette for his bravura turn as the Marquis de Sade in Quills, a provocative period drama that unfolds in an environment of madness and depravity. Rush portrays the Marquis as a tormented genius, confined in a madhouse and driven obsessively to commit his lewdest fantasies to paper. Kate Winslet, in her best role since Titanic, plays a laundress who smuggles his manuscripts to eagerly waiting printers, and Joaquin Phoenix is quietly persuasive as the progressive priest who tries to accommodate the Marquis and runs afoul of a tyrannical doctor (Michael Caine). Screenwriter Doug Wright, adapting his own play, twists historical events and characters for dramatic purposes, turning the 18th-century asylum into a charnel house of chilling perversion and casting the Marquis in a vaguely sympathetic light. Director Philip Kaufman (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) is even less ambiguous: He sees de Sade as a martyr in the crusade for freedom of expression, and his keepers as deluded or sinister agents of a repressive society. While certainly titillating in its depictions of de Sades fevered dreams, Quills doesn’t wallow in muck for sensationalistic purposes; it has a more serious message -- one that’s conveyed with consummate skill from both sides of the camera. The DVD edition includes three separate featurettes covering the film’s production and subject, along with a full-length commentary by Wright and a gallery of stills. Ed Hulse Interested in the song lyrics? - Check out themostlyrics.com! Looking For A DVD? - Check out dvd-a-rama.com! |
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