The film presents a perfect four-way clash of ideologies, each character representing a different response to transgressive art.
But then the film twists the knife. As Royer-Collard escalates his war—sealing the Marquis in a cell, sewing his anus shut (a horrifyingly symbolic act of censorship), and executing a secret, sadistic operation of his own—we realize the doctor is not curing perversion; he is becoming its ultimate expression. In his pristine, orderly home, he tortures his child-bride with psychological cruelty far more insidious than anything de Sade writes on paper. The film’s thesis becomes clear: The man who bans the book becomes the book’s protagonist. quills movies