By the time he made his final film, Querelle, German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder must have lost touch with the rest of the world. An astonishingly pretentious mess, the film tells the story of a sailor named Querelle (Midnight Express' Brad Davis) and his adventures in the coastal town of Brest. During his time on shore Querelle manages to become a murderer, a homosexual, and something of a magnet for a whole bunch of messed up characters. Uneasily mixing sex, violence, and overly poetic narration, Querelle is dense with self-importance. It all negates itself, however, as the film is an impenetrable bore, with its most noticeable aspect (beyond the leaden acting) being its murky and incredibly ugly cinematography.

VIDEO:
The anamorphic video is really hard to judge given the muddiness of the film itself. Everything is cast in deep orange light and the film has a sickening, dirty feel. While this sort of manipulation sometimes works with the subject to create fascinating atmosphere, here it just serves to make you want to stop watching. The transfer, judging by the lack of damage and dirt, is probably a good one. It's the movie that looks bad.

AUDIO:
The audio is available in English and French mono. Subtitles are also available.

EXTRAS:
Trailers for sex, lies and videotape and The Opposite of Sex are included. The only thing linking these films is the presence of the word "sex" in their titles and what they have to do with Fassbinder's film is anybody's guess.

FINAL THOUGHTS:
Like his contemporary Werner Herzog, Fassbinder is from another era, one of bold symbolism and heavy drama. Unlike Herzog's films, however, Querelle contains no characters or recognizable human struggles and that, more than anything else, makes Querelle an ordeal to watch.