Querelle - When Violence And Sexuality Unite 

What do you think about Querelle? How would you compare it to Rainer Werner Fassbinder's other films? Which films would you recommend similar to Querelle? Thanks for watching!

I saw this at the cinema when it first came out and blimey! ...my popcorn went everywhere!

Great analysis of this delicious film. I read the book in my late teens and it was definitely a transgressive and horny eye-opener and pulse-raiser (well, pretty much like all of Genet's work) and I was frankly intoxicated when I subsequently saw the film, both at its lurid artificiality and the unashamed and brazen homo-masculinity on display - Fassbinder really manages to turn these desperate and brutal members of the demimonde into poignant antiheroes who cheat, fight and fuck with tragic, sweaty vitality. Unsurprisingly, I've been a huge fan of Fassbinder's ever since, he truly was an astoundingly prolific creative volcano whose early death robbed cinema of one of its master queer stylists.

O M G!!! Qurelle is the very first gay movie I ever watched when VHS tapes were available for rent. Inside a gay shop in DuPont Circle in DC, and curious, my bf and I decided to try renting a gay storyline movie for the first time. Qurelle was what we selected. Was truly shocked to see this, although, just a clip. But I absolutely hated that the entire clip was narrated even if the movie itself had very few to no scripted lines for the actors. And even without much of a script, it wasn’t hard to follow and understand every scene if you were aware of gay culture.

I'm not gonna lie, I had to rewatch this video twice. I was ogling over all the men and lust. At first it was fine but leather on men hits my brain funny and then I realized I had tuned out for about 2 mins. On the second watch it got me interested in watching the film beyond the allure of gorgeous men. The whole experience reminded me of seeing a video on Derek Jarman's Sebastian. I'll watch this tonight though its tragic for a film to be made in what seems to a very rough time on the director. I am happy to find a director I never heard of even if it is bittersweet. Edit: Researching Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a bit of an eye opener. I'm still interested in the film and make my own opinion but oh my goodness.

Difficult not to see this as a depressingly self-loathing suicide note from Fassbinder.

I can’t fully speak on the movie as I have not seen it, but I am unsettled when we depict acts of sexual violence as if they were consensual “rites of passage”. I know of too many people whose first sexual encounters of various kinds were coercive or unwanted in nature and who sometimes play them off as somehow just a part of life. It leaves me unsettled.

Querellle of Brest? More like Queerelle of Beast, am I right? (sorry, couldn't resist that one, I'll get me coat...) It's interesting how the times have changed in that the taboo part of this film in 1982 would have been the gay sex while the conflating of sex with violent abuse would have been seen as more or less saucy and unproblematic in another context. Compare with straight erotic thrillers of the same era like Body Heat (1984) Body Double (1984), Jagged Edge (1985), 9½ Weeks (1986), and Fatal Attraction (1987), all of which feature "rough sex" and some form of sexual-emotional coercion. Nowadays the gay sex and queer eroticism of the film would be seen as normal by most people but it's the mingling of rough sex on the boundary of abusive behaviour or even sexual assault that makes everyone uncomfortable. Which is a positive sign in that consensual relationships of any kind are acceptable but coercion is not. However, we mustn't judge this as if it's a realistic drama pushing an agenda for real-world behaviours. Of course the clearly theatrical staging seems to indicate that this is an erotic fantasy and never expected to be any kind of reference for the real world. Even for Genet, much closer to the real-world equivalent of all this, there was a hefty chunk of fantasy in his telling of the story. Must seek out this film, it's a good excuse to get on that Fassbinder retrospective that I've been promising myself. Again, apologies for the crappy pun.