If you want to know anything about the Marquis de Sade, avoid this inane, profoundly unhistorical travesty. Dumbed-down, sensationalised-up, amazingly ignorant of the period, gross and childishly prurient in its depiction of sex, violence and excretion - and yet avoiding (indeed, denying) what was almost certainly the fully sexual relationship between the characters played (hammily) by Rush (where did he get that accent?) and Winslett! There are far too many biographical, factual and continuity errors to bother listing them - Quills itself is a pathetic goof. Let's hope someone like Patrice Leconte decides to rectify this - and in Ridicule he has already made a start.
Reviews
2 Reviews
Dr. Petiot
(1990)
Hugely entertaining account of a French mass murderer
25 January 1999
From the opening sequence in a cinema when Dr Petiot (the extraordinary Michel Serrault) seethes with indignation at the puny evil portrayed by a Nosferatu-like character on-screen and then enters the action (a la Purple Rose of Cairo), you know this is an unusual movie experience. The story is strongly based on the real Petiot, a deranged but extremely clever, even witty, physician who preyed on desperate people fleeing the Holocaust and enriched himself in the process, then escaped arrest and built a new career as a French army doctor. When, finally, the real Petiot was brought to trial, he became an instant celebrity and the event a true cause celebre. This movie was something of a labour of love for Serrault and at a time when Roberto Benigni's La Vita e Bella is causing a sensation, this sleeper should become far better known.
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