Critics have faithlessly failed to appreciate how on several levels, Fassbinder’s film-like his protagonist Querelle-performs a consummate act of betrayal. 2 Fassbinder followed but also challenged his source material, genre and other film conventions, the politics and preferred representation of Gay Liberation, and the expectations of his audience.
Querelle was met with controversy, disappointment, and what Frank Episale describes as “disorientation” amongst critics. It shares the common Fassbinder themes of betrayal, power relations, rivalry, ritual, and love, but its stylized set, stiff performances, and use of colour contrasts with his more naturalistic style in the 1970s. For filmmaker Monika Treut, Querelle “sums up what Fassbinder expressed in many of his earlier films,” 1 but Querelle is intriguing also for intimating new and unexplored directions. Querelle was Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film, shot only a few months before his death at age 37. “ Anyone who hasn’t experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing of ecstasy at all.”
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