Marquis, The (1989)

I first became interested in seeing this when I heard it described as a French Meet the Feebles. Well, I can certainly see the parallels (both are extremely well made films with entirely puppet casts who are rather crude) but these films both deserve to be considered separate entities. While Meet the Feebles is a rowdy anything goes straight forward comedy (and a damn good one at that), The Marquis is a far more introspective and personal film. Technically, the film is outstanding. All the characters are either puppets or humans in animal type puppet costumes. The work here is incredible, and oddly enough the costumes were designed by French puppeteer who worked on a Sesame Street type show. This caused a mini uproar at the time of its release due to the frank sexual nature of the film (this is to be expected since one of the main characters is an erect philosophical penis by the name of Colin, voiced by Valerie Kling). Director Henri Xhonneux deserves recognition for pulling all of these elements together for a surprisingly heartwarming (!?) story.

The story tells of the life of the infamous Marquis de Sade (birth name - Count Donatien-Alphonse-Francois de Sade) as he is incarcerated in an asylum (as he is wrongly accused of planning to overthrow the king) shortly before the onset of the French Revolution. He begins writing his now famous works and frequently converses Colin (the erect penis mentioned earlier). When Justine (a cow/woman) is raped and impregnated by the king de Sade's troubles are compounded - as if he didn't have enough issues with Colin being furious at him for sliding him in a crack in the wall and badly cutting him. To deal with this, a corrupt priest plans to pin the rape on de Sade. Throw in a cop accused of selling bad pork and you probably have a pretty good idea of what this film is like.

Even with all the extreme behavior present in this movie it was a pleasure to sit through. It doesn't come off as nasty as most adaptations of de Sade's life do and even left me feeling good at the end. Be sure though, this isn't a movie to show children (which I'm sure you could gather from the situations described above)..

I saw the video release of this from First Run Features. It wasn't easy to come across, I had to special order it at a retail store and pay $30. It was in French with English subtitles. It's probably best this way as the actors' voices fit the characters well and I can't really picture them any other way. I've also seen bootlegs of this floating around the internet, while I haven't seen any of these prints I would recommend avoiding them as this is rather darkly photographed movie to begin with - I could only imagine how difficult a murky print would be to watch.