Marquis de Sade

Plainly gifted film-maker Henri Xhonneux has made an entertainingly bawdy animatronic yarn wherein the unashamedly sinful, Bastille incarcerated Marquis colourfully ruminates upon life's more fleshly pursuits with his remarkably cogent, and uncommonly outspoken reproductive organ! This deliciously deviant and impeccably playful fantasy about the dastardly double-dealing, internecine intrigues, illicit social intercourse and perfectly perfidious peccadilloes of the great and the good are wittily observed and whimsically realised in director Xhonneux's frequently fabulous, literately lewd phantasmagoria. While the ribald drama is set within the murky, Draconian confines of a jail, the joyful film itself is a luminously liberating affair, perhaps even able to uplift more than a viewer's flagging spirits!

Whatever one thinks of the recent rise of Sade as a darling of the intelligentsia and pseudo-intelligentsia, it must be admitted that some not-bad films have been made about him. This film, unfortunately, is evidence more of the trendiness than the historical interest, as its whimsical and overly-bizarre production attests. Only if there is a future sub-genre in which giant rats are sodomized by lobster tails is it likely to remain more than a curiosity. Yes, I know it had a talking penis in it. Tee hee. I still found it empty.

Until I saw 'Quills' I thought I had repressed the memory of this weird animated take on the Marquis de Sade. A man is imprisoned and spends his time talking to his equally animated penis who has opinions of his own.

It's been awhile since I even thought about this film but I don't remember hating it, though nobody I knew would go with me to see it. Every character is represented by an talking human/animal. The marquis slides his member through a crack in between the loose rocks in his cell and hurts himself pretty badly. He cuts himself open to use his own blood to write his stories. A cow/woman gets raped and produces milk/blood out of her udders which is grotesque.

I guess the story is riveting if you're in the theatre with nowhere else to go. Otherwise, you may find yourself returning to the place where you rented this, complaining to the management. Sorry I couldn't be of more help in this review, but it was over ten years ago.

This is one of the strangest movies I have ever seen. I found it to be discomforting and just weird. It makes you squirm in your seat and wonder what the people making this are like in real life. It's definitely entertaining and it sort of sucks you in, especially if you don't know French and have to read subtitles. It is certainly not American and it is certainly very peculiar. I have never seen a movie where everyone is wearing life-like animal costumes and acting like humans in very abnormal ways. This movie gives me the chills. However, I would watch it again just because it is so fascinatingly WEIRD.

Somewhere along the lines of "The Muppets Take the Bastille" via "Deep Throat", this unusual but lavishly produced film is (very) loosly based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade. Using period costumes and animal masks, the interweaving tales of treachery and deception make for clever intrigue, but the high sexual content (in it's brief release in the USA, it was limited to the "art house" circuit), has hobbled the film's availability.

While not a "porn film" in any real sense, it does reflect the sexual mores of pre-Revolutionary France and features clay-animated dramatizations of sequences from the Marquis' own writings. Let the kids watch "The Lion King" for the umpteenth time, then lock the door and watch this for yourself. Just remember that a film like this would NEVER be made in the USA. You'll have to hunt for this one, so don't bother looking for it in your local Blockbuster.

(Sidenote: The designer of the costumes is a puppeteer for a French children's TV show along the lines of "Sesame Street", and it caused a brief sensation when the film was first released.)