The cinematography of Querelle is a departure from many of the earlier works of Fassbinder: it’s decadent and baroque, shot entirely on set in a studio in lurid colors, mimicking the high-brow flowery style of Genet. When Robert leaves angrily, he brags to his friend, the cop, in a daze: “I just fucked Robert’s brother” he says, his hand grazing across a nipple over his tank top. “I’ll have to give you that, you know your job.”Īfterward, Nono standing at the bar, tells Querelle’s brother what just happened, “your brother is a hot little number.there was shit on my dick if you want to know”.

We see the face of Querelle contort in the agonizing confusion of pain and pleasure. Nono’s movement is slow and deliberate: Querelle bands over, and Nono lowers his pants, slowly lets spit drip to Querelle’s ass, moves his hand to Querelle’s nipple before slowly entering him. Querelle purposefully changes his dice to lose, and as he’s unbuttoning his pants he protests, saying “be careful it seems like it’s going to hurt.” Shot in soft focus the sex scene has a characteristic steaminess as the shiny sweating skin of the bodies is shown in an extreme close up. The game turns out to be a mask, right at the crucial moment of throwing the dice, Nono turns around, giving the sailor a chance to cheat, an alibi behind which to hide their gay desire.

Querelle has brought a cargo of heroin that he hopes to sell on the black market through his brother’s connections at the brothel but intrigued by the rumors of the brothel, he decides to also throw dice with Nono.

It follows the vicissitudes of a beautiful all-American sailor named Querelle (Brad Davies) who arrives in the harbor town of Brest, where his brother Robert (Hanno Poschl) has been living as a kept man with Lysiane (Jeanne Moreau) the wife of the notorious brothel owner Nono, (Günther Kaufmann, who was once Fassbinder’s real life boyfriend). The movie is based on a novel by Jean Genet, patron saint of thieves and homosexuals. Querelle is the last movie directed by German queer director Reiner Werner Fassbinder, distributed posthumously in 1982, a few months after Fassbinder died at the age of 37 of a cocaine and barbiturates overdose, the substances that he used to fuel his prolific worklife.

Querelle of Brest by Jean Genet