Querelle 1982

Georges Querelle, Brad Davis, a Belgian sailor aboard Le Vengeur, docks in Brest and makes his way to the Feria, a sailors’ bar and brothel run by Madame Lysiane, [Jeanne Moreau]. Lysiane’s lover, Robert, Hanno Pöschl, is Querelle’s brother. The two brothers greet each other with warmth that quickly gives way to a slow, painful exchange of punches in the belly, underscoring the film’s constant tension between affection and violence.

Querelle makes a deal to sell opium to Nono. During the execution of the deal, he murders his accomplice Vic, Dieter Schidor, by slitting his throat. After delivering the drugs, Querelle announces that he wants to sleep with Lysiane, knowing this means he must participate in a game of dice with Nono. Nono, Günther Kaufmann, has the privilege of testing every prospective lover, with his own cruel maxim: “That way, I can say my wife only sleeps with arseholes.” > That way, I can say my wife only sleeps with arseholes.

Querelle deliberately loses the game, allowing himself to be sodomized by Nono. When Nono gloats about Querelle’s “loss” to Robert, the brothers erupt in a violent fight. Afterwards, Querelle has sex with Mario, Burkhard Driest.

Back on the ship, a builder, Gil, murders his work mate Theo, Neil Bell, who had been harassing and sexually assaulting him. Gil hides from the police in an abandoned prison, and Roger Bataille, Laurent Malet, who is in love with Gil, establishes contact between Querelle and Gil in the hopes that Querelle can help Gil escape. Querelle falls in love with Gil, who closely resembles his brother, but Querelle betrays Gil by tipping off the police. He cleverly arranges it so that the murder of Vic is also blamed on Gil.

A perennial undercurrent in the film is that Querelle’s superior, Lieutenant Seblon, Franco Nero, is in love with Querelle, and constantly tries to prove his manliness to him. Seblon is aware that Querelle murdered Vic, but chooses to protect him.

The film ends with the sailors aboard Le Vengeur, presumably about to leave port. A heartbroken Lysiane, spurned by Querelle, conducts a tarot reading for Robert: she realizes that he and Querelle were never brothers after all. As Lysiane laughs maniacally, we see Querelle’s birth record transcribed on-screen.