Based on the award-winning play by Doug Wright, this erotic and fantastical drama reconstructs the unknown fate of the Marquis de Sade, the writer and sexual deviant who was imprisoned in Charenton Asylum for the last 10 years of his life. QUILLS is a Gothic period piece from director Philip Kaufman that details the fall of the French Revolution and the subsequent imprisonment of the fallen aristocrat, a notorious free thinker who lived to write with an outstanding creative spirit and provocative sexual appetite. In the film, the Marquis de Sade (Geoffrey Rush) befriends the liberal director of the asylum, Abbe Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix), and both share affections with the asylum laundress, Madeleine (Kate Winslet). Madeleine is a nubile but virginal young woman profoundly attracted to the mental prowess of the clever and wickedly defiant inmate who willingly smuggles his banished texts out of the asylum. But, when Napoleon reads JUSTINE, one of Sade's anonymous texts, he sends in Dr. Royer-Collard (Michael Caine), a cruel and moralistic man, to "cure" the Marquis of his supposed madness. However, the battle between the moralistic doctor and Sade only provokes the prisoner's rebellious spirit, resulting in a horrifying tragedy. QUILLS is a deliriously beautiful film that captures the free spirit of the imagination and the powers of undaunted artistic expression. Geoffrey Rush is a marvel as the profane and ingenious writer, strutting and flourishing about his erotically charged cell with awe-inspiring passion and greatness.
Depending on your point of view, this is either a remarkable testimony to the importance of artistic freedom or the debauched tale of a devilish man: either way it's a considerable cinematic achievement. Geoffrey Rush is perfect as the unrepentant Marquis de Sade, confined to a mental institution and smuggling his “smut” to a publisher care of laundry maid Kate Winslet. When hard-line psychiatrist Michael Caine is sent to oversee the liberal regime of priest Joaquin Phoenix, de Sade has to use all his ingenuity to continue writing. Director Philip Kaufman's multilayered exploration of cruelty, repression and hypocrisy celebrates de Sade's indomitable spirit, while reminding us of the enduring and corruptive power of his imagination. Quills is the work of a master.
New York Times
"...Geoffrey Rush [plays] Sade as a gleeful voluptuary unfettered by either morality [or] sentimentality....Mr. Kaufman revels in the chaos....Ms. Winslet's shrewdness as an actress has never been better displayed than it is here..."
Halliwell's Film Guide
A fantasia on de Sade as an icon of subversion and victim of institutional repression, given a spurious power by the quality of the acting.
Radio Times
Halliwell's Film Guide
