Very well executed

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Blistering performances.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

I don't think I quite understood what "Querelle" was about but the good aspect of it is that you at each view you get new things, and it grows on you. Far from being a masterpiece like "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" or "The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant", but this is a very good project directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, his last and the one he got some of the heaviest criticism of his career. In a way, the most tragical of all of his works after being forced to cut part of it to get a release in America, probably the first time he ever had to back down and cut something he directed.Based on author Jean Genet's 1947 novel Querelle de Brest, the movie revolves about Querelle, an Belgian sailor (Brad Davis) who plays with danger with his criminal affairs selling opium and his involvement with male and female, using of his good looks to get what he wants. To him (and to everyone around him) everything's a game in which losing sometimes can be useful (the dice game where he deliberately loses in order to have sex with Nuno, played by Gunther Kauffman). Querelle's a man with many love affairs and relations, center of attention of his own brother (Hanno Pöschl), and their strange "brotherhood", love/hate kind of thing; Nuno, his wife (Jeanne Moreau) owner of a decadent bar where most of the film takes place, and he's treasured from distance by his captain (Franco Nero). The other half of the film explores what can be called of real love between Querelle and a murderer (who is played by the same actor who plays the brother).The movie is very open when it comes to presenting Querelle's involvements with both genders, specially his sexual scenes with another men, very bold at the time. If the story gets too much on a second plan, since the ideas are somewhat vague, foggy, the high point of enjoyment of the film is seeing Querelle getting well with his mates. For the most part, the movie isn't so exciting and is very confusing with its imposition of ideas one on top of another. What's the story in deeper terms? A man discovering his sexuality, trying new things or he's trying to find real love? Is he testing his moves as a player or he's just a man trying to survive using of his talents? Fassbinder intrigues us more with the whole concept of man being a product of his environment, adapting to his (and others) needs and what he makes here (don't know if the same happen in the book) is a strange fantasy world where everyone is bisexual or have more inclination towards another man, enjoying endless sunsets created on fake sets, surrounded by large columns resembling phallic elements. The script is more like a literary work than a cinematic experience, with several cards expressing Querelle's inner thoughts or the captain's romantic narration watching the love of his life, working all sweaty.Rainer had his reasons and perhaps we'll never know what motivated him making this film in the way he did, but the artist is deeply immersed in this work, putting elements of his life, his love and all (including a dedication to El-Hedi Ben Salem, one of his partners, who died that year). A little bit butchered, panned by critics and part of the public, a distressing experience to the director who wasn't much in his best moment in life but with career on the top, but sadly he died and this was his last film. Not much of a great swan song but very admirable in several ways. The risk taken by Brad Davis was incredible and unfortunately he paid the price for it, barely appearing on well-known films or great projects. But what a performance! He's really good, very desirable and makes the character be what he needs to be. How many times you've seen a film where it is sold to us someone who is so beautiful and attracts everything and everyone but when you look at, it doesn't cause such effect? Davis was all that.Here's a tale about immorality, manipulation, the right of the strongest to conquer anything, ultimately about the individuals who kill the things he love. Men, essentially. 7/10

Querelle is an erotic fable about several closeted tough guys loitering around the French Navy port Brest, in some indeterminate timeframe. In a go-for-broke concept, Q shines a spotlight on the latent homosexuality in supposedly straight activities like the military, gambling, fighting, ports-of-call, whore-houses, etc.. It has more fetish imagery for gay men than Ben Hur or the Ten Commandments.Basically five or six male figures ponder, intellectualize and ruminate themselves into and out of mechanical couplings. Genet's fringe figures (...the most verbal, stylized brutes ever) wrestle with their suppressed homosexual urges, but remain inactive until a suitable pretext can be found to copulate with the guy who's driving them to distraction, or, (just as good) till they find some criminal outlet to discharge their energy. It's all loosely strung together by an occasional narrator who's a few mint juleps away from a coma. It's as fragmented as Petronius' Satyricon, and Genet himself, writing from prison, was always a million analytical miles away from his own experiences. It's no surprise that a Genet film has problems with forward momentum and bogs down in ideas: weird, erotic, complex and spiritual. With the amount of time you'd need to spend viewing and re-viewing this incoherent movie to get something out of it, why not read the book?Even if you can get past the artifice of the unsubtle stage set (with its faux-masonry phalluses), this would still be over the top; as campy as humanly possible because the acting has been taken to such a strange level of abstraction. "A" will overtly tell "B" what B's backstory and emotional temperament are, as an odd way to get info to the audience ...and the story still ends up emotionally and psychologically diffuse. It feels like a half-hearted dress rehearsal, where everyone has been told to suppress all hints of their motivations.You could find any number of things here to mock, but for me Brad Davis' bloodless line readings are toxic. Kudos to him for taking on such a difficult project, but as the central figure, his muted performance is just too flat to hold the movie together. His entire audition may have consisted of the single line, "Could you oil up and try on this tank top?" It's a mystery why Rocky Horror became a cult movie with lines shouted back at its absurdities, but this didn't. (...guy in dragon-lady drag? check! ...twinkie in Shirley Temple wig? check!)Querelle is an experimental, epic piece of erotic deflation, generally too challenging, complex and inert for any audience that it might reach, ...kind of like a Genet book actually. It expects a certain maturity from an audience, to grapple with its dense weave of sexual ideas, but it's also pretty darned silly on its face. You can explore the transcendent aspects of sex and crime by entering Genet's world, or you could just go have some forbidden sex and rob a convenience store ...then ruminate.

"Querelle",which was last work of Rainer, was my first Fassbinder's experience. I think many times before see it, because I didn't know if "Querelle" was the correct film to begin to understand the work of an artist like Fassbinder. But, i decided... and i read a Lot of critics that tell that was a bad movie and a bad work of Fassbinder... i think just the opposite. Fassbinder's "Querelle" is one of the best movies that i have ever seen with this delicate topic of homosexuality.Fassbinder's "Querelle", based in the novel of the same name by Genet, told us the story of Querelle, a sailor who is going to live an unpleasant conflict among him and the people who surrounds him. Is a tale of sexuality and murder. Fassbinder's "Querelle" is an important anlization of the man's decadence. A man that is able to murder, to sell his best friend, to be a real monster. But Querelle is a man, and at the same time is a selfish monster... like much of us. The movie is too an analization of the masculine thing, and is important have clear that Fassbinder's "Querelle" is not a gay film at all... is the recognition of different ways to love.I have not seen much of Fassbinder (I hope that my next film, that i want see: "The Marriage of Maria Braun", catch me like this one) but this work with poetic force is one of the most important looks (As i said before) to the human decadence (With "Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma" and "Dogville"). I hope that people that has not still seen it don't be allowed to guide of much of the bad critics. Just see it... and tell us the things that you think. For me, is a real masterpiece.*Sorry for the mistakes... well, if there any.

10 for Camp Sensibility. You normal folks may rate it closer to zero.Querelle is Super Camp. It puts John Waters' "Female Trouble" to shame. Not even a drag-dripping Almodovar flick can evoke such gaiety. This film is audacious in its "seriousness" and demands you do the opposite. Now, other users have called it Village People-ish, amateurish, High Schooly, etc. but those are understatements. This film is funnier with each viewing. I have most of it committed to memory because my roommate and I in college used to watch it over and over (alternating with Pee Wee's Big Adventure and Law of Desire). I truly love the recycled actors/costumes/sets, the Tea Room Queen On High voice overs, the summer stock saturation of set lighting. And that fat queen buzzing around Jean Moreau is worth hitting rewind for. It's just one big costume party, and you're invited. I think if Fassbinder had tried to make it funny he'd have come short of the laughs that are there now. And, frankly, which of us gays couldn't enjoy 90 minutes of hunky Brad Davis in his silly sailor getup…dialogue be damned? You must love this unintentional satire. You'll be quoting it's lame lines for life."Each man kills the thing he loves…da de dum, da da de dum…" (Did Madame forget the lyrics again? I heard that happened to Peggy Lee in her linebacker years."I look like her." (Little Gay Roger coming onto Gil, who likes Roger's sister) "Is there anybody else who wants to...me? PLEASE!" "When Madame Lysiane found herself before Querelle, her gaze went to his fly in spite of herself." (It goes down from there) "You? You're just a woman." (Followed much later by, "Look at him! Big Nono, the best stallion that ever existed!") The jilted Lysiane huffs, "You mah ememy!" PLEASE watch this film expecting nothing...and you will gain everything. "Da De Dumb, Da Da De Dumb."