The betrayals of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Querelle (1982)

Querelle was Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s final film, shot only a few months before his death at age 37. 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. 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.