Quills 🎥 2000 Movie Info

Plot Summary

In Paris, the incarcerated Marquis de Sade is confined to the asylum at Charenton, overseen by the Abbé du Coulmier. The Marquis has been publishing his work through laundress Madeleine “Maddy” LeClerc, who smuggles manuscripts through an anonymous horseman to a publisher. The Marquis’s latest work, Justine, is published on the black market to great success. Emperor Napoléon I Bonaparte orders all copies burned and the author shot, but his advisor, Delbené, suggests another idea: send Dr. Royer-Collard to silence the Marquis. Meanwhile, the Abbé teaches Madeleine to read and write. Dr. Royer-Collard later arrives.

The Abbé rejects Royer-Collard’s offers of aggressive archaic “treatments” and speaks with the Marquis himself, who swears obedience. Royer-Collard then travels to the Panthemont Convent in Paris to retrieve his promised bride, the underage Simone. They are given a run-down chateau by the Emperor, with a young architect, Prouix, on hand for its renovation. The hasty marriage incites much gossip at the asylum, prompting the Marquis to write a farce to be performed at a public exhibition. The audacious play, titled “The Crimes of Love”, is interrupted when the inmate Bouchon molests Madeleine off-stage, prompting her to hit him in the face with an iron.

Royer-Collard shuts down the public theater and demands that the Abbé do more to control the Marquis. Infuriated, the Abbé confiscates the Marquis’s quills and ink, prompting more subversive behavior, including a story written in wine on bedsheets and in blood on clothing. The Marquis is eventually left naked in an empty cell. A maid reveals that Madeleine has been helping the Marquis. Madeleine is whipped on the order of Royer-Collard until the Abbé stops him by offering himself instead and declaring that she will be sent away. That night, she visits the Abbé’s chamber to beg him to reconsider sending her away and confesses her love for him in the process, prompting him to kiss her.

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