By Wieland Speck
QUERELLE
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder | Germany / France, 1982 | 107 minutes | Color
Rental formats: DVD, Blu-ray, 35mm
World distributor: Gaumont
QUERELLE (1982). All has been said about Fassbinder’s last film: it is
the gay filmkunstwerk and at the same time our legacy. Stylized to the highest degree, the film expresses desire and longing qua violence and death on the eve of Fassbinder’s own death and of the AIDS deaths of so many. In retrospect, the film’s context could not be any more dramatic. The combination of Jean Genet’s controversial novel with a cast including Brad Davis, Franco Nero, and Jeanne Moreau – staged in a hermetic studio world to images by Xaver Schwarzenberger and music by Peer Raben – yields an unprecedented cinematic experience.
At the same time,
Depart to Arrive (Alexandra von Grote, 1982) about a relationship breaking apart was an important contribution to lesbian visibility. Before this film, lesbian sensibilities had rarely been shown in such close proximity.