Another Gay Movie: "Querelle"

This is the first in a series of articles on queer movies submitted by long-time commenter Adam Isn't Here. He, in his own words, "died in February of 1967 while selflessly rescuing kittens from an ASPCA that had caught fire. He missed the Summer Of Love and has never gotten over it."

I’ve decided to take a look at what I’ve generously termed the “Queer Film Canon.” I’ve got ‘em all queued up in my Netflix and each week I’ll watch one and jot down some thoughts for publication in Washington DC’s esteemed alt-gay blog-of-choice. I’d like to tell you that I have some goal in mind, but anything I wrote here would be merely to impose meaning on something which serves no clear purpose. At least at this point. It’s just something I’ve been wanting to do for a while and it occurred to me that you guys might like to do it with me.

First stop, the death of German New-Wave and Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s “Querelle.” What a gay title.

German, gay director Fassbinder was a piece of work; that much is for sure. Almost as famous for his personal dramas as for any of his films, scorned repeatedly by critics and minority watch-dogs, including gay groups, he pretty much gave the finger to conventional morality/wisdom/behavior. And while dying prematurely from drug complications isn’t exactly breaking the tortured-artist mold, a lifetime of ignoring the rules, defining new ones and pursuing your own creative muse with punk-rock-like abandon more than makes up for that. If living and dying on your own terms doesn’t qualify someone for induction to the New Gay hall-of-fame, then I don’t fuckin' know what New Gay is.

"Querelle" would be Fassbinder’s swan-song. He died before its release from the aforementioned drug complications. It’s hard for me not to think that “drug complications” doesn’t somehow constitute suicide in one way or another--especially when the drugs that got so “complicated” are cocaine and sleeping pills. But I guess if you’re up all night editing and doing lines of coke, you gotta get to sleep somehow. Who knows?

The film itself is strange by most standards, if not Fassbinder’s. The titular character is a (pretty hot) French sailor with a perpetually exposed chest and a relationship with his brother that’s alternately antagonistic and uncomfortably close. Querelle wanders around a highly art-directed port-town in the south of France, where the streets are lined with giant phallus-shaped street-lamps and the sun is always setting in the sky, casting everything in an orange glow.

I don’t want to go on and on about the plot here, but suffice it to say Querelle gets into some tangles in the town. He smuggles some opium, he visits a brothel, he plays some dice, he gets fucked a few times, he fucks some ladies, has a knife fight with his brother (whom he clearly wants to fuck), a couple people get killed and one gets shot. Oh, and he falls in love.

The movie does suffer from a common failing of most gay movies in its less-than-dynamo performances. It’s kind of forgivable here if you ask me, as this is a stylized piece of high-falutin’ art and not some writer’s jerk-off, shamelessly autobiographical, heard-it-a-million-times-before “coming out story”. Ugh, I hate those. This is about Querelle “finding himself” but it also has things to say about male sexuality (or Fassbinder’s)--specifically, the aggression, competitiveness, and vanity that is (or is sometimes) inherent in men’s sexual relationships. “Each man kills the thing he loves,” the whore-house proprietress sings. Well, let’s hope that isn’t true.

Verdict: Honestly, I fell asleep at the one hour mark. I was in New York this weekend and barely slept so don’t fuckin rag on me about it all right? I rewound it (or whatever it is you do with DVD’s) and I saw the whole thing. No Maxim-style “it sucked” half-assery from me. I can’t say "Querelle" blew my mind, but I suspect that it would benefit from repeat viewings. It’s worth a look.

Next Week: Cruising. Hopefully. I’ve been dying for ages to see Pacino rock the leather man hat and to find out what all the fuss is about. Please stay tuned.