Quills

Geoffrey Rush brings a winking, wicked charm to his role as the silver-tongued and asylum-incarcerated Marquis De Sade in this succulent but disturbing fictionalized portrait of history's most notorious literary pornographer. After the priest (Joaquin Phoenix) who runs the 18th century sanatorium housing the Marquis fails to stem the flow of his lascivious stories being smuggled to publishers by a virginal but eagerly hedonic laundress (Kate Winslet), a hypocritical and sinister doctor (Michael Caine) takes over the joint and becomes Sade's archnemesis in a battle of wills. Director Philip Kaufman declines to visit the darkest corners of his subject's psyche, preferring to portray him as a charming pervert, but every performance is filled with psychosexual nuances which are affected by Sade's gravitational influence--eventually leading to grotesquely murderous results that devastate several lives. A voraciously tantalizing, beautifully envisioned period piece with absolutely delicious dialogue. Recommended. (R. Blackwelder)