Franco’s Die Marquise von Sade is one of those half-drunk movies that can’t decide if it wants to be porn or poetry. It stumbles somewhere between the gutter and the gallery — too soft to offend, too artsy to arouse. You sit there watching it and think, Christ, either take your clothes off or say something profound. But it never quite does either. That’s Franco for you. The man could turn a striptease into a funeral and call it cinema.
The story — if you can call it that — is just another fever dream about sex, betrayal, and rich people losing their minds under candlelight. Velvet drapes, pale bodies, some moaning that sounds rehearsed. It’s all decadence on discount. The Marquis de Sade gets dragged into it, not as an idea but as a hall pass for depravity — like naming your hangover after Hemingway so you can feel classy while you puke. The film wants to be wicked, but it’s too tired, too foggy, too wrapped up in its own perfume.
And yet, you keep watching. Franco’s camera has that lazy, leering patience — the kind that belongs to a man who’s seen too much and still hopes there’s one more beautiful thing hiding in the mess. Faces, flesh, flickering light — he captures them like he’s in love, or like he’s dissecting them. You can’t tell which. The scenes stretch on forever, dialogue fades into breath, and you start to feel like you’re trapped in someone else’s dream — half aroused, half bored, but somehow unable to look away.
And then there’s Martine Stedil — poor, beautiful Martine — drifting through Franco’s madhouse like the last sane person at a bar that’s been open three days too long. She’s the light in all that smoke, the only reason the damn thing holds together. The camera loves her, maybe too much, tracing her like it’s afraid she’ll vanish. She’s fragile, yeah, but there’s steel under there — that quiet defiance of someone who knows she’s surrounded by nonsense and refuses to drown in it. You can see it in her eyes: I’m better than this, but I’ll give you a show anyway.
There’s a sadness in her beauty — not the kind you write sonnets about, but the kind that creeps in after you’ve seen too many cheap motel mornings. She gives Die Marquise von Sade a soul it doesn’t deserve, a pulse beating underneath all the heavy breathing and soft lighting. Without her, the movie would just be another slow striptease for people pretending to be intellectuals. With her, it almost fools you into thinking it means something.
Franco’s fans will lap it up — they always do. It’s one of his “better” ones, whatever that means. The editing’s less drunk, the story almost makes sense, and the flesh parade looks expensive. For the rest of us, it’s just strange enough to keep you watching, like a candle guttering in the dark — half hypnotic, half pathetic.
By the end, Die Marquise von Sade feels like an apology wrapped in silk. It promises sin but hands you ennui. Still, Martine Stedil makes it bearable — no, more than that. She makes it human. She’s rebellion in a slip dress, beauty fighting to stay alive in Franco’s fogged-up nightmare. And maybe that’s the real miracle — that in a film so desperate to lose itself, she somehow keeps you from looking away.
