An admirable antidote to Philip Kaufman's tiresome and campy Quills(2000)with Geoffrey Rush, this features a fluent, strangely appealing, only mildly reptilian Daniel Auteuil, whose tireless acting fluency here reminded me of Al Pacino. No "de": Sade is at pains to deny he's a noble and favors the revolution and expresses contempt for Christianity and particularly the notion of a Supreme Being which the momentarily ruling Robespierre is promoting. Sade is being held with a lot of aristos at a big "asylum," actually a country-club style prison at Pictus, a former convent with a grand park where everyone is paying a manager for what favors they can afford hoping to remain there till the guillotine is retired or they start beheading some other group. In fact the Reign of Terror ends and Robespierre and his Jacobins are out and the asylum is vacated . (This all takes place ten years before Quills, I'm told.) But meanwhile Pictus is a bizarre mixture of frivolity and horror, since cart-loads of decapitated bodies are being brought to be buried in mass graves, leaving a horrible stench and reminding the inhabitants they could be next to go.
Sade's libertine stances and immense self confidence make him attractive to rebellious young people and he particularly chooses to instruct and flirt with the young Emilie de Lancris, played by "gamine du jour" (Hoberman) Isild Le Besco (of the 2004 À tout de suite). Eventually, in the film's most "shocking" scene, Sade arranges for Emilie to be deflowered in his presence by the tall young gardener, Augustin (Jalil Espert), getting Augustin to whip him first, which turns Autustin on. The longtime mistress he calls "Sensible" (Marianne Denicourt) lives in town with their little boy and the uptight, sadistic Fournier (Grégoire Colin), a nervous member of Robespierre's inner circle. There are scenes with Fournier and Sensible; and others when Sensible and the boy visit Sade, whom Fournier doesn't like, but protects out of love for Sensible. There is also an orientalist pageant depicting the "joys of captivity" which begins as a staging of one of Sade's milder plays. There are astonishingly bright-colored and eccentric costumes, which are apparently true to the fashions of the Terror. Jacquot, in a brief interview which is the DVD's only extra, says he took pains to have all details authentic. But it tends to feel like a project whose vague aim was simply to make a movie about Sade starring Daniel Auteuil. In that Jacquot succeeded; otherwise; he rehabilitates the writer's reputation, or presents him more as a serious figure than an ogre, monster of depravity, or household word. An interesting and smart film, but not a profoundly memorable one.
Sade's libertine stances and immense self confidence make him attractive to rebellious young people and he particularly chooses to instruct and flirt with the young Emilie de Lancris, played by "gamine du jour" (Hoberman) Isild Le Besco (of the 2004 À tout de suite). Eventually, in the film's most "shocking" scene, Sade arranges for Emilie to be deflowered in his presence by the tall young gardener, Augustin (Jalil Espert), getting Augustin to whip him first, which turns Autustin on. The longtime mistress he calls "Sensible" (Marianne Denicourt) lives in town with their little boy and the uptight, sadistic Fournier (Grégoire Colin), a nervous member of Robespierre's inner circle. There are scenes with Fournier and Sensible; and others when Sensible and the boy visit Sade, whom Fournier doesn't like, but protects out of love for Sensible. There is also an orientalist pageant depicting the "joys of captivity" which begins as a staging of one of Sade's milder plays. There are astonishingly bright-colored and eccentric costumes, which are apparently true to the fashions of the Terror. Jacquot, in a brief interview which is the DVD's only extra, says he took pains to have all details authentic. But it tends to feel like a project whose vague aim was simply to make a movie about Sade starring Daniel Auteuil. In that Jacquot succeeded; otherwise; he rehabilitates the writer's reputation, or presents him more as a serious figure than an ogre, monster of depravity, or household word. An interesting and smart film, but not a profoundly memorable one.