Rating: 
Summary: A great movie!
Review: I never expected this movie to be so dark and sexy. It looks like a screened comic book with flat stereotyped porn cliché characters in a violent gay storyline. It captivated me and made my night with my boyfriend quite better.
This movie is sexy, shallow and very dark. If you like gay films, this is a great choice.
Besides, Brad Davis is the cutest and sexiest guy ever.
Rating: 
Summary: Strange
Review: I saw it three times, read articles about it. But I do not understand this movie. Who can tell the story? But never mind - just the acting of Brad Davis is worthwhile to see it again. A keen and successfull experiment of R.W. Fassbinder to use just the Studios and an invented harbour-world. Like in the old days of the silent movies. Nevertheless it was a (medium) succes in Germany 1982 and achieved cult-status in off-cinemas, for example it is frequently shown in Paris.
Rating: 
Summary: No wonder it was his last film.
Review: I've been a fan of Fassbinder since my college days. I was hooked when I saw "The Marriage of Maria Braun", however Querelle was a big disappointment for me. I saw the VHS version some years ago, and wonder if this film wasn't the reason for Fassbinder's suicide (as it was his last film).
Rating:
Summary: sorry, this is not a good farewell for Fassbinder
Review: It's very sad that this film became his last. I too love Fassbinder's work and Brad Davis is great, but you can't say that by watching this piece. Please see this after you went through all other movies from this master otherwise you would get wrong impression about his talent.
Rating:
Summary: A Captivating Aesthetic
Review: Querelle is based on Jen Genet's Querelle de Brest. Fassbinder uses Genet's strange mix of blunt dialog and masturbatory narration to create a film that feels more like a revelation of poetry scratched into one of Brest's pissoirs.
Sometimes the characters speak to each other, sometimes they seem to speak in spite of one another, sometimes they simply speak - all too appropriate in the port of Brest, a fertile ground for nearly anonymous, mechanical sex. Though Querelle (perfectly cast), at once vulnerable and malevolent, is the subject of the film's action, the true star is this seething port. Brest is realized entirely on a soundstage, which allows the director to quite literally paint with colored lights and symbolic, often pornographic details. Though ostensibly set somewhere in the first half of the twentieth century, the classic effortlessly melds with the modern (1980s) with the addition of an arcade game and archetypal "homosexuals" that might have stepped from a Tom of Finland drawing.
Querelle is a sailor "in danger of discovering himself", as the mistress of the brothel reveals from her tarot. His strength demands the respect of his peers, his beauty stokes his supervisor's prurient desires, but his inner conflicts drive him to self-destruction as he explores his own deviance. Lust morphs into violence, denial morphs into degradation, sex morphs into violence, and violence morphs into love.
Far from the flip, whitewashed, sexless homosexuality that saturates the media today, Querelle explores the conflicts and complex relations that occur between virile men who discover they desire each other.
In contrast to some other reviewers, I would have to say that this is actually my favorite Fassbinder film--though perhaps it is not representative of his work overall.
Rating:
Summary: Surprising!
Review: The bright side of this movie is that it's surprisingly outrageous! It is not a very direct movie, you have to infer much of its meaning and it's very subject to personal interpretation in some parts.
It is a very theatrical movie, and it depicts homosexualism in a very novel way -- no gayness, just homosexualism.
Rating:
Summary: very poor DVD quality
Review: The film is great, but the DVD release doesn't do justice to it. Picture is ok, but not great. The sound is mono. Subtitles are only occasionally simultaneous with the action. This is really very annoying, at least if one wants to watch the film in its original French track, rather than the English dubbed version.
The quality is thus that of an Asian bootleg, except that the DVD costs four times as much!
Rating:
Summary: Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves
Review: There is no doubt that this is an unusual film, but one that contains several layers of meaning. Most of the content is symbolic and philosophic, but it is an interesting attempt at dealing with subjects such as narcissism, sibling rivalry, homosexual desire, jealousy and violence. Brad Davis' Querelle is a cipher, and he plays him as such, but his acting is quite remarkable. It is a shame he did not live long enough to give us the benefit of seeing him develop more as an actor. Jeanne Moreau is, of course, a formidable presence. This is a film that will only work for some people: being gay certainly helps. Rent it first and see.
Rating:
Summary: Wings Of Querelle? Little To Desire?
Review: These comments refer to the DVD edition. First of all and for the record, this flick was obviously filmed in English (!) as anyone who watches lip movements can readily detect. Of course, if you only saw it on VHS or a VHS derivative, you probably couldn't see any lips, much less lip movements. This flick is so bad that it rapidly becomes a parody of a cheap porn flick without the porn part. HEALTH WARNING TO PROSPECTIVE VIEWERS: The ubiquitous voice-overs, presumably reflecting the deepest and innermost feelings of the particular character involved in a given scene, can send viewers into uncontrollable spasms of laughter! Just when one expects some profound reflection by a character on the current state of affairs (no pun intended) what emerges are increasingly banal sexual descriptions that, were they to be quoted here, would be canned by the censors along with the rest of this review. If you could somehow cross this flick's "thought-bubbles" with those in Wm. Wender's fatally dull and unimaginative "Wings Of Desire", you would have the instantaneous creation of not one, but two cult classics! Wooden acting by Brad Davis and others makes this flick a parody. Stay away from this turkey unless you want to liven up a party with the X-rated unintended hilarity, where caustic comments by the audience can greatly add to the fun. A zero-star flick if ever there was one.
Rating:
Summary: Wings Of Querelle? Little To Desire?
Review: These comments refer to the DVD edition. First of all and for the record, this flick was obviously filmed in English (!) as anyone who watches lip movements can readily detect. Of course, if you only saw it on VHS or a VHS derivative, you probably couldn't see any lips, much less lip movements. This flick is so bad that it rapidly becomes a parody of a cheap porn flick without the porn part. HEALTH WARNING TO PROSPECTIVE VIEWERS: The ubiquitous voice-overs, presumably reflecting the deepest and innermost feelings of the particular character involved in a given scene, can send viewers into uncontrollable spasms of laughter! Just when one expects some profound reflection by a character on the current state of affairs (no pun intended) what emerges are increasingly banal sexual descriptions that, were they to be quoted here, would be canned by the censors along with the rest of this review. If you could somehow cross this flick's "thought-bubbles" with those in Wm. Wender's fatally dull and unimaginative "Wings Of Desire", you would have the instantaneous creation of not one, but two cult classics! Wooden acting by Brad Davis and others makes this flick a parody. Stay away from this turkey unless you want to liven up a party with the X-rated unintended hilarity, where caustic comments by the audience can greatly add to the fun. A zero-star flick if ever there was one.
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