QUERELLE DE BREST Rainer Maria Fassbinder

In a completely fictional Brest —recreated on a soundstage—there are no exteriors; the city is a hellish non-place, displayed through an exaggerated and deliberate artificiality. Querelle disembarks from the ship in search of his brother, sparking arguments and sex, emotions and misunderstandings, illuminated by colorful and soft lights. Fassbinder 's last film is also his final hymn to solitude ( the director died very young a few months before the film's completion, from a cocktail of alcohol and antidepressants , whether intentional or not, no one knows ). I was a kid when it came out— censored —in the cinema. I was disturbed by the trailer shown on television ( which, thinking about it now, was quite strange they even showed ), but I didn't get to see it in the cinema, where it passed like a meteor. I saw it for the first time ( the first time of many ) years later and was enchanted: the atmosphere that pervades the film never corresponds to reality: dream or nightmare, it is always a world far from everyday life, a dreamlike corner. Sex is seen as punishment, redemption, but it never has a sentimental aspect; love finds its highest point in the failed sexual act .

Sex in Fassbinder 's films never has a playful or joyful aspect; it is always permeated by ulterior motives, double-crossing, and supremacy. Jeanne Moreau plays the only woman in the story: a controversial female character, part whore, part friend, part sister, and part mother. Her singing " Each man kills the things he loves" is one of the film's most famous and well-known highlights. Alongside her, actors of the caliber of Brad Davis and Franco Nero lend themselves to portraying misguided, underdog characters. Loneliness remains the story's central theme: every violent, erotic, and delatory act is driven by the protagonists' total isolation from everyone else and their concomitant hunger for companionship. The sense of absolute desperation is ever-present, stronger than hatred, love, and passion: each character struggles against the death they carry within them.

Querelle is an angel we would all like to meet and get rid of immediately afterwards.