Quills
Short description
Quills is a drama set in early 19th-century France, where the Marquis de Sade is held in the asylum at Charenton. He continues to write scandalous works that are smuggled out of the institution and circulate in Paris, while the abbé who runs the asylum tries to rehabilitate him and a doctor sent by Napoleon arrives to put a stop to his writing. The conflict that follows pits the marquis's imagination against the authorities' determination to silence him, with a young laundress, Madeleine LeClerc, caught in the middle. The screenplay by Doug Wright adapts his own stage play.
Philip Kaufman directed the film, which sits between Rising Sun in 1993 and Twisted in 2004 in a career that also includes The Right Stuff and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Geoffrey Rush plays the marquis, Kate Winslet plays Madeleine, Joaquin Phoenix plays the abbé and Michael Caine plays Dr. Royer-Collard, with Billie Whitelaw and Patrick Malahide in supporting roles.
Released in November 2000, the film had a budget of 14 million US dollars and took about 18 million US dollars worldwide. It holds a rating of 7.2 out of 10 on IMDb from 59,000 votes and the same score on TMDB from 749 votes. Its critics' rating of 7.2 out of 10 from 125 reviews is in line with those audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- Filming took place in England from August 5 to October 29, 1999.
- The actors who played the patients at Charenton all received detailed consultations from a professional psychiatrist regarding the precise diagnosis of their characters' mental disorders.
- The real Abbé de Coulmier was a hunchback, standing 4 feet (1.22 meters) tall.
- During the performance staged by the patients of Sharanton, a mask identical to the one worn by Robert Merivel (Robert Downey Jr.) in the film "Restoration" (1995) lies backstage.
- At the beginning of the film, a wax head of Queen Marie Antoinette, provided by the London Madame Tussauds wax museum, can be noticed in a basket with severed aristocratic heads.
- All the lines from the original screenplay that were cut during the film's production nevertheless found their place in it – being written on the clothes, sheets, and walls of the Marquis de Sade's cell.
- In fact, the Marquis de Sade's second wife, Marie-Constance Quesnet, lived with him in Charanton – she managed to obtain a room located next to her lover's cell. Their daughter lived there as well.
- The real Marquis de Sade was extremely obese in the later period of his life.
- Geoffrey Rush himself directed the play performed by the psychiatric hospital patients in the film.
- The original title translates to "Feathers."
- The real Madeleine LeClerc was only 13 years old during her "prison romance" with the Marquis de Sade.
- Luton Hoo (Luton, Bedfordshire, England), a famous castle, stood in for "Sharanton".
- The text presented in the film as works by the Marquis de Sade was actually written by the screenwriter, Dag Wright.
- The melody that the Marquis de Sade hums throughout the film is that of the French children's song "Au clair de la lune." Its second line becomes increasingly relevant to the character as the film progresses: "Give me a pen to write a word."
- The props department requested details about food favored by the Marquis de Sade in such a way as to obtain the composition of the “ink” mixture in the final episode.
- Abbot Du Coulmier’s maniacal desire to silence the Marquis de Sade, the abbot’s punitive measures against the Marquis, including the cutting out of his tongue, and Du Coulmier’s love for Madeleine Le Clerc – all of this is purely fictional, as is the Marquis de Sade’s suicide.
- A committed vegetarian, Joaquin Phoenix refused to wear leather items during filming. Therefore, his shoes were made from artificial leather.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
