Prior to achieving success as a novelist, poet and playwright, Jean Genet spent three of his teenage years in a French penal colony, joined, and was subsequently drummed out of the French Foreign Legion for committing "indecent acts", embarked on a career as a petty thief and prostitute, and found himself in and out of prison for various and sundry crimes. In fact, Genet wrote his first novel Our Lady of the Flowers, while residing in the hoosegow. After finally finagling an introduction to the great French Renaissance Man, Jean Cocteau, Genet found a champion for his work. Additionally, it was only through the efforts of Cocteau, Pablo Picasso and Jean-Paul Sartre that Genet was able to avoid serving a life sentence for his numerous criminal offenses. In 1945, Genet anonymously penned the transgressive Querelle de Brest, a novel heavy with erotic gay content and explicit images illustrated by Cocteau, himself. The story of a sexually magnetic (and homicidal) sailor at large in the French seaport of Brest, Querelle de Brest was published in 1947, and eventually prosecuted as an affront to public decency in 1954. Though the case was dismissed on procedural grounds, Querelle de Brest was not published in English until 1974. 

By the early 1980's, German provocateur Rainer Werner Fassbinder was filming his own studiously surrealistic take on Genet's work. Titled simply Querelle, the film was released in 1982, a mere two months after the 37-year-old Fassbinder's death from a drug overdose. As last hurrah's go, Querelle is decidedly not the crowning achievement of Fassbinder's career (for better representations of his work, see The Marriage of Maria Braun, The Merchant of Four Seasons, or Ali: Fear Eats the Soul). Many viewers will have little tolerance for the director's theatricality (Querelle was filmed on a stage with highly expressionistic sets), the difficult lighting that sometimes blurs or bleaches out the actors' features, the stilted dialogue, performances that range from utterly deadpan to operatically over the top, and the horrific voiceover narration that sounds like it belongs in an educational film for middle school students. Not to mention the legendary Jeanne Moreau, doing herself no favors, as the melancholy madame of a dockside whorehouse. 

American actor Brad Davis, his career cresting after acclaimed performances in Sybil, Roots, and Midnight Express, stars as the title character whose dangerous beauty and sexual availability unleashes tidal waves of lust among his shipmates and the local populace. This includes Moreau's Lysiane, the brothel owner conducting a blatant affair under the nose of her bartender/pimp/husband Nono (Gunther Kaufmann). A subsequent roll of the dice allows Nono to be the first (in this town, anyway) to deflower Querelle after the sailor loses a bet he never planned to win. Querelle's brother Robert (Hanno Poschl), --who is also Lysiane's lover--maintains a volatile, combative relationship with his sibling that teeters on the razor's edge of desire. Mario (Burkhard Driest), a corrupt cop and part-time bouncer at Lysiane's club soon finds himself drawn into Querelle's web when the pair (along with Nono) get involved in a drug deal cemented by Mario's sexual congress with the sailor. Meanwhile, the lecherous Gil (Hanno Poschl, once again), a hardhat, and dead-ringer for Robert, hungers for an unseen woman while toying with her starry-eyed, younger brother Roger (Laurent Malet). And, finally, there's Seblon (Franco Nero), captain of Querelle's ship and a middle-aged sad sack saturated with unrequited love for Querelle. It's soapy, melodramatic noir aspiring to high art. It's a fantasia of sailors, leather daddies, murder, betrayal, highly choreographed "fistfights" (think West Side Story), hommes fatales in dirty white tank tops, boatloads of testosterone, a couple of bare butts, and a bit of rough sex (conveyed mainly through facial closeups of pleasure and pain). Yet, for all its horniness, Querelle is a surprisingly unsexy movie. With better pacing and a little less affectation, Querelle might have worked as a neo-noir; it certainly has all the ingredients. However, most of the performances are either listless or overwrought, the pacing is glacial and if Fassbinder seems to be striving to rise above common noir, it doesn't work. High art it ain't.  

Hairy-chested and sweaty in his tight sailor's trousers and wife-beater tee, Davis makes a scorching Querelle. During his all-too-brief career as an actor, Davis delivered some fine performances, but, sadly, this was not one of them. Whether it was the actor's choice or the director's, Davis pretty much sleepwalks through the movie, delivering his lines in a numbed monotone that undermines his character's allure and violent nature. Brad Davis had charisma to spare but his underplaying of Querelle (if it can be called that) is shocking to see, given the overall quality of his body of work. This Querelle is--quite literally--an empty vessel waiting to be filled. Again and again, as it turns out. Yet his fierce carnality, despite all appearances, feels forced and unreal. 

Actress Jeanne Moreau hits a completely different note with her manic rendering of Lysiane. As an aging, insecure seductress, Moreau seems like a caricature of her former self, and is flat out bonkers in some scenes, especially when she ineffectively tries to seduce Querelle (once she discovers that her husband has succeeded--multiple times--in this same endeavor, she simply goes berserk). Slinking around in shady-lady dishabille, Moreau belts out Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves with a world-weary monotony that lacks energy or enthusiasm. I kept remembering Madeline Kahn channeling Marlene Dietrich in Blazing Saddles: I'm tired, tired of playing the game... Kahn was hilarious, Dietrich was bewitching, Moreau is....not great. 

Except for Franco Nero's nutty-yet-somehow-stable Captain Seblon, and Laurent Malet's sweet naivete as Roger, the other male cast-members are one-dimensional and straight out of an old Warner Brothers B-movie. Which would not necessarily have been a bad thing had Fassbinder taken a less flatulent route. Hanno Poschl, doing double duty as both Robert and Gil, tries his best tackling two thankless roles--both cuckholds, in their own way--but the script barely does the actor justice. That Gil is the fulfillment of Querelle's incestuous fantasies about Robert does nothing to make the proceedings more interesting; maybe if Gil and Querelle had taken it all the way it would have shaken things up enough to lift the production out of the doldrums. But, no, the movie is comfortable in its sedateness. In fact, Fassbinder declines to embrace the possibilities presented by the original story, not the Old Hollywood B-movie charm it so desperately needs, or the explicit meatiness of Genet's novel. Like Wim Wenders did with Until the End of the World, the plot's inherent possibilities are dropped in favor of making something more artistic. (Although, to be honest, I quite like the first half of Wenders' overlong film). 

All that being said, I rushed to buy the new Criterion Collection Blu-ray of Querelle because I thought that, by watching a more pristine version of the film, I might form a better opinion of it. Surprisingly, the Criterion release seems remarkably shoddy given that esteemed organization's reputation for excellence. Much of the film, especially the beginning, seems out of focus and restored from less-than-stellar sources. Was a public domain copy used for this restoration? I have the Gaumont release from 2012 and it looks better than this. At least, I think it does. To be sure, it's been awhile since I watched the Gaumont Blu-ray so I'll have to watch it again (not anytime soon) for comparison purposes. The Gaumont version also features a short film about Genet's Querelle de Brest, which is conspicuously absent from the Criterion release. The latter does feature new material on Fassbinder, and an excellent essay by film critic, Nathan Lee, but the cover art (see image at the top of this post) is abominable. They'd have been better off using one of Cocteau's images than the steroidal bodybuilder who is meant to resemble Brad Davis as Querelle but doesn't.  

Despite all its flaws, I like the premise of Querelle (although, again, its potential was ignored) and enjoyed the eye candy on display. I also like the seedy, avant-garde style of the production. Given its literary origins, the movie should be more interesting--and far hotter--than it actually is but I'm sure there is a niche market for this pseudo-intellectual, self-important tosh. If you can get your hands on the illustrated copy of Genet's novel, go for that instead of this rather limpid movie version that promises far more than it delivers.