QUEER CLASSIC
Querelle
Brad Davis, Franco Nero, Jeanne Moreau
As a film critic, I’m the first to admit that we don’t always, among many pans from mostly straight critics. Today, this lurid, lyrical, unabashedly horny adaptation of Jean Genet’s erotic novel is an essential queer text of its own, ripe with desire and moral decay and some of the most riotously direct phallic imagery ever captured on screen. As the title character, — a pinup-type bisexual sailor who also happens to be a cold-blooded killer — the late American actor Brad Davis cuts a genuinely iconic figure; if it feels like you’ve seen every one of his poses before, it’s because he provided the literal model of unrepentant homosexuality in Aids-era queer cinema. Don’t look to for humanity or empathy or even especially coherent storytelling: it’s a swaggering, unrestrained enactment of pure queer libido. Messy, filthy and dripping in sex.
