Querelle (1982)

Film: Querelle (1982)

Stars: Brad Davis, Franco Nero, Jeanne Moreau, Laurent Malet, Hanno Poschi, Gunther Kaufmann

Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2023 Saturdays with the Stars series, we are looking at the Golden Age western, and the stars who made it one of the most enduring legacies of Classical Hollywood.  This month, our focus is on Franco Nero: click here to learn more about Mr. Nero (and why I picked him), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

Franco Nero spent much of the 1970's working in-and-out of Hollywood, never quite fitting in as a big screen performer in the United States after the successes of Django and Camelot.  He did make some Hollywood movies, including Force 10 from Navarone (with a young Harrison Ford) and the 20th Century Fox comedy-mystery The Man With Bogart's Face, where he played opposite Michelle Phillips (of The Mamas and the Papas).  But by-and-large most of his work was in Italian thrillers & westerns none of which had the international cache of Django.  This didn't mean that Nero didn't get adventurous with his filmography.  He was a muse for a number of different important directors, including Luis Bunuel, Claude Chabrol, and today's director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder.  Fassbinder is one of those names that most cinephiles, particularly queer cinephiles, are aware of but that the general public is completely oblivious to.  Even his most famous films (Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant) are probably only known to you if you say the word Criterion with a sense of awe.  Nero joined Fassbinder for the latter's final film Querelle before a drug overdose took his life at the age of just 37.

(Spoilers Ahead) Querelle is an odd movie, and there's no way around that, and one that definitely has a plot, but it's so inconsequential to most of the scenes that it feels like a bit of a waste of time to summarize it.  Suffice it to say there are two brothers, Querelle (Davis) and Robert (Poschl) who meet when Querelle's boat (he's in the navy) is docked near where Robert's bar Feria is.  Robert is having an affair with a woman named Lysiane (Moreau), whose husband Nono (Kaufmann) is a crime lord in the city.  The catch is, in order to profit off of the crime, Nono gets to have sex with you if you lose a game of dice to him, which Querelle does on purpose so that he can experience sex with a man.  The film progresses with Querelle, a criminal (he's a murderer), trying to fight both getting caught and also fighting his yearning to have more sex with men.  All of this happens with Querelle's commanding officer Lieutenant Seblon (Nero) becoming increasingly sexually obsessed with Querelle, whom he wants to have to himself, and in the end he does-they end up on the ship, with Querelle resigned to a life as Seblon's love slave (though we don't see them have sex onscreen, it's heavily implied that's what happens after the credit role, both of them finally accepting their lust for one another).

If all of that sounds, well, like the plot of a gay porn...that's basically what Querelle is.  The movie is really hard to grade (I might rewatch this at some point when I investigate more of Fassbinder's work, as I feel like I'd like it better with some context, though writing down my feelings I understand I was a bigger fan than I expected), because if you go by the mechanics of it, it's kind of awful on the surface.  The dialogue is dreadful.  It honestly reads like the first five minutes of a porn, refreshing each scene, with 70% of the dialogue being some spin on "I really want to fuck you."  Having screen legend Jeanne Moreau, one of the most beautiful women in the history of the movies, basically playing a horny harlot that no one wants because every man in this universe is gay, is so strange & doesn't have enough campy payoff (she's essentially the "right in front of my salad" girl, and if you get that reference...you're the ideal audience for this movie).

But it comes together really well, and eventually you get into what Fassbinder is going for.  The sets and costumes look incredible.  Everything feels like it was somehow lensed on an MGM backlot that was designed by Tom of Finland.  I'm not sure if Davis can act (I've never seen Midnight Express), but he's perfectly-cast here as an object of unspeakable lust, and the monologues about how much he likes bottoming are so nonchalant and bold, I've never seen something like this in a movie.  The film doesn't shy away from jaw-dropping topics, or being totally shocking in a way that wouldn't fly without some underlined notice in modern cinema.  Hanno Poschl, who plays Querelle's brother, also plays a gay man named Gil whom Querelle falls in love with...the thing is, they're virtually identical onscreen (there's little done to hide that they're played by the same actor), strongly implying that Querelle wants to have sex with his brother, though they never actually say it out loud.  Another scene has a twink basically being treated as if he was his sister, so that the man who is clearly obsessed with the blonde, younger man can justify how insanely horny he is for him.  This is not the sort of film you'd expect in 1982, even in an era where movies like Making Love and Cruising were allowing mainstream actors like Kate Jackson & Al Pacino to appear in queer-themed studio films.

Nero is good as the lieutenant.  True to the plot, there's not a lot of explanation why Querelle hasn't already succumbed to the dashing-if-lascivious Seblon, incredibly handsome in his naval uniform, but Nero plays him well.  Other actors might've mandated that their characters go through the same "objections" about their homosexuality that Querelle gets, but Nero plays the character as horny, and well aware of his gay attraction to the beautiful naval officers under his employ.  When he eventually lands Querelle, I was a little worried that the plot wouldn't allow them to be together (unlike some of his other sexual encounters, Querelle doesn't bottom for Seblon onscreen), but Nero plays the character well enough to let you know that yes, he's looking out for Querelle, whom he clearly is in love with...but the first 90 minutes of the movie where he spent grabbing his crotch at Brad Davis' plunging neckline are not forgotten in the way he can't stop staring at him.  Fassbinder was not shy about sex, and the viewer is very much aware that by the film's end, Seblon's explicit fantasies will become a reality.