In his last film, director Rainer Werner Fassbinder muddles his way through Jean Genet's perverse "Querelle de Brest." This film is an absolute shambles. Poorly acted and about absolutely nothing discernable, "Querelle" nails the coffin shut on Fassbinder.

Brad Davis plays the title character with all the emotion of a dead fish. Sure, Querelle is supposed to be passionless yet he is a murderer and a masochist so there is room for a character. Yet Davis plays Querelle as if he were completely disinterested in anything happening around him. All the other characters in this film follow Davis' lead and become as stiff as cardboard. Of course, Fassbinder's script gives them no indication of what the hell this film is about anyway, so instead of playing their characters as ambiguous or shadowy, the principles here simply move as directed and mouth their lines dispassionately.

This film is about murder and homosexuality and Fassbinder treats them as equals. Murder here is committed for no reason and without motivation. Sex is committed with the same indifference. Querelle enjoys (and unashamedly brags about) being butt-fucked. He is not alone, in fact, all but one of the male characters here engage in gay sex. But no one in this film has sex that isn't coupled with violence, anger and deceit. Homosexuality is treated as if it is a normal everyday occurrence and yet it is degraded and cheapened. No males in the story have sex with passion, in fact Querelle can't have sex when he is required to "be in love." He realizes that he can be butt-fucked without any emotional involvement but to fuck someone else he must become passionate. In "Querelle" the emotion required to have sex is the same emotion required to kill or to fist-fight. It is all the same.

Like Genet, all of Fassbinder's work deals with homosexuality (conscientiously or not) and he tries to say a lot of things about homosexuality in this work but none of his messages are positive and most of them are unclear. For example, Querelle and his brother Robert may be the same man. They mirror each other and, at times, embrace. At other times they fight. Robert does not like that Querelle is gay so it is possible that this is supposed to be 2 halves of the same gay male, constantly at war with himself about his true feelings. Then again, maybe not. Another male in the film, a young good- looking man, is seduced with talk of his beautiful sister. The seducer seems to really be talking about his attraction to the girl inside the fey boy. But all of this is muddled in Fassbinder's scrambled storytelling. In reality, the only message Fassbinder get across clearly is this: "Each man kills the thing he loves." He accomplishes the delivery of this message by having the only female character in the film (an unattractive, aging adulteress played by Jeanne Moreau) sing it in a cacophonous cabaret song repeatedly throughout the film.

In addition to bad acting and a unintelligible plot, Fassbinder ruins this film with voice-over narration and title cards. The ever present obtrusive narration tells us what Fassbinder doesn't know how to show us. Maybe he realized this was necessary after the horrible performances he received from his principles. But it seems more likely that Fassbinder is just a horrible storyteller. He cannot write dialogue that expresses any idea or furthers any character development so he writes obtrusive, ambiguous narration instead. At times the characters soliloquize but they too are narrating and not really speaking as characters. Maybe Fassbinder though this was cleaver or, god forbid, artsy. It is not. Equally dreary, the conspicuous title cards fly by quickly with the same pointless information that the narrator imparts. These distracting, sophomoric gimmicks only add to the ambiguity of the story. One begins to believe that this is, in fact, a film about absolutely nothing.

Fassbinder also film's this mess on a ugly, obviously fake set under soft yellowish light. This is as boring to look at as the stiff acting. Nothing in "Querelle" has any emotion whatsoever, not even the light. He also has the sets built with an open air look. Characters walk by in the background as Querelle is fucked for the first time. If anything, this film should seem harsh and claustrophobic not soft and airy.

"Querelle" is the worst kind of film. It seems to attempt to be "artistic" and "deep;" it seems to want to say something but instead it implodes under the weight of it's own ambivalence and evaporates into oblivion leaving absolutely nothing in it's wake. Fassbinder is a highly regarded director but there is no talent evident here.

Notes:

This film stars Gunther Kaufmann, Fassbinder's first love, who returned to Fassbinder's filmatic fold in the later years.

The film is dedicated "To my friendship with El Hedi Ben Salem." Fassbinder's second love, he had committed suicide some time earlier but Fassbinder had just recently found out. As the film was being finished he asked that this dedication be added at the beginning.

This film was edited by Franz Walsh (Fassbinder's pseudonym) and Fassbinder's second wife Juliane Lorenz.

Fassbinder died on June 10th 1982 before the film was officially released.

Lodger Award for the #1 Worst Film of All Time.

(Review written in 1993)

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