quills and the marquis de sade.
written: 2:44 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2005

I caught Quills (the play) at the DBS Arts Centre last night with Mel and Alex.

It wasn't as good as the film. I shouldn't compare two rather different media but fact still remains - I watched the film first and loved it to bits so whatever else that comes after will logically be bench marked against the film. The film was amazing and passionate and truthful and provocative and poignant; the play was entertaining and thoughtful and draggy.

Also, last night was my first time in quite a few years looking at a man naked - which only further affirmed my conviction that a naked man is only hot when he doesn't turn around to face me. Call me childish, laugh at me for being prudish, but the male sexual organ...isn't exactly very attractive.

Maybe that's why I'm still adverse to the idea of sex after like so fucking long.

Oh wait, on the other hand, even if I wanted to have sex I don't have anyone to do it with. That's because I look disgusting without my clothes on. I'd know, considering I am treated to that grotesque sight every single day of the week.

Anyway, I digress. I was talking about Quills the play. Yes, I think I should get my hands on a copy of the play. It was quite different from the film; for example, in the play it wasn't so obvious that the Abbe had a thing for Madeleine until after she died and after he did something horrible to the Marquis (something along the lines of chopping off his hands, or was it after he chopped off the Marquis's head?) which came back to haunt him that somehow conjured up this strange vision of Madeleine coming back to life and talking about an experience with Jesus Christ in which Jesus was the Marquis instead? Somehow or other Madeleine was possessed by the Marquis and violently seduced the Abbe, and because the Abbe is human he couldn't control himself and hence they fucked (not that I want to belittle sex; 'fucked' is the only word to properly describe it).

Only, it wasn't entirely in his head, for Madeleine with her legs around his waist suddenly went limp, became lifeless, dead.

OH MY GOD NO WAY NECROPHILIA!

No, but seriously, it was kind of strange. Quills the film also had a necrophiliac scene but that scene was purely a dream and in the Abbe's dream Madeleine was genuinely alive. And in the film Madeleine was tender and loving, unlike Madeleine the crass and vulgar in the play. But then again in the film we knew from the start that the Abbe held out a torch for her, but in the play it was only hinted at very subtly, and I only think that the hints were hints because of the film; to someone who hasn't seen the film the supposed hints might not even have meant anything more than what they represented exactly. But whatever it is, the play didn't address Abbe's inner conflict (his desire for Madeleine and how it doesn't agree with his priesthood) and so that necrophilia scene came off as rather left field-ish and extraneous, even slightly senseless.

Doctor Royer-Collard was also less of an asshole in the play than in the film. And I thought his wife was supposed to be a teenager; how come they got Janice Koh to play her? Ha ha ha ha ha.

I didn't like how the Abbe was portrayed. Call this excessive Joaquin Phoenix fanaticism if you must (since he played the Abbe in the film and it was perfection) but I didn't recognise the Abbe at all. Why did they make him chop off the Marquis's head and whatever? In the film the furthest he went against his anti-torture beliefs was to order the cutting off of the Marquis's tongue and stand by and watch the deed being done, and that was about the furthest he deviated from his beliefs. In the play he unravelled so incredibly that he was almost irredeemable, especially the way he kicked and abused the Marquis before he chopped off his head. The Marquis also died by choking on the Abbe's crucifix in the film - a final defiance and rejection of religion, which actually made the Marquis an extremely commendable character in my opinion, even if it's only because he stuck to his guns all the way till the end.

But in the play he died in such a wimpy way that it was almost depressing. I mean, he got his head chopped off?!?! Um...okay.

Oh well, props to good acting though. The guy who played the Marquis was no Geoffrey Rush (well, duh) but he was good all the same. Yeah.

Now I feel like watching my Quills DVD. It's a brilliant brilliant film and I found myself reciting some of the lines in my head during the play. "Conversations, like certain portions of the anatomy, always run more smoothly when lubricated." That is just hilarious.

Once again I freaking regret not buying books by the Marquis de Sade when I saw them right in front of me in plain sight when I was in Taipei last year. Seriously, I sometimes wonder, just what is wrong with me?

If there's one thing I never quite got about Quills though, it's the way ordinary people seemed so receptive of the Marquis's words that they completely lapped them up and even got off on some of it. I don't get it. I read synopses of his novels online and I am repulsed by their depravity. A Hundred Days of Sodomy, for instance. Why would anyone derive pleasure out of reading about poor boys who are sexually abused by sick paedophiles, for crying out loud? He even has a book entitled Incest and if I read that I'd probably be induced to take a hot and long shower to cleanse myself than to be inclined towards sexual thoughts.

So why do I want to read him? Because he embodied anti-establishment and rebellion. I'm attracted to people who go against the norm, however extreme their means, and someone who wrote about nothing but sex and depraved sex and more twisted sex is someone worth reading.

The only problem is the whole translation issue. Why did he have to be French? What a bother. I hate reading translated works which is why I never read Arthur Rimbaud despite being intrigued by the film Total Eclipse (in which a young Leonardo DiCaprio played the apparently gay poet and bared his arse for all of a split second).

Another reason is laziness but we can pretend that that's not the case.

It is 3.20 a.m. and I am very sleepy.

before sunrise // before sunset


Previously:
- - Tuesday, Aug. 29, 2017
I'm moving. - Sunday, Jul. 11, 2010
In all honesty - Tuesday, Jul. 06, 2010
What I want for my birthday... - Sunday, Jul. 04, 2010
On Roger's behalf. - Friday, Jul. 02, 2010