PiraBit if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

SnoopyStyle The Marquis de Sade (Geoffrey Rush) is locked up in the Charenton Insane Asylum run by Abbé du Coulmier (Joaquin Phoenix). Laundress Madeline LeClerc (Kate Winslet) falls for the lascivious Marquis de Sade and helps him smuggle out his writings. Emperor Napoléon Bonaparte wants him stopped and sends Dr. Royer-Collard (Michael Caine) with his tortuous treatments. Royer-Collard marries the young Simone (Amelia Warner) who lived in a convent.Geoffrey Rush is absolutely brilliant as the Marquis de Sade. The acting in this is first rate. I wish Rush get more screen time as the lead character. He's nominated for the Oscar as lead actor but he's more as one of the cast. Royer-Collard's hypocrisy is interesting but the movie spends a little too much time on him. I would rather the movie stay with Geoffrey Rush from start to finish and more Kate Winslet.

Irishchatter I found this film to have been really horrible because of the way it gave us a feel of an instituted asylum. It just show you how those poor people were put into a box and isolated. The most shocking scene in this film was when the patients were putting on a show for the high class people and it was just awful to look at! Also leaving a seriously mentally ill man to kill a laundrette, how dare the nurses or any health care professional weren't looking after their patients! That made me mad!I had to skip some scenes because some of them weren't appealing and upsetting.The only scene I loved but nearly cried was when the priest and the laundrette made love in the church. Although sadly,it didn't last too long as it was only a dream. I really felt sorry for him especially that he was put into the Nuthouse for trying to commit suicide because of his grief over Madeleine. I just wish it didn't have to happen for him but it did.

Manal S. I mainly give this movie a high rating because not only does it tackle a topic dear to my heart and mind, but also it does so very artfully and dexterously. Having the historically notorious character of the Marquis de Sade as the central figure of the story was more than enough to draw my attention. I doubt that the events in the movie are historically 100% accurate but I liked how Doug Wright subdued a quite few facts about de Sade and the era in order create a provoking drama about the power of the word. The movie examines some long accepted paradigms, gets deep into them and turns their components upside down. Religion is no longer the epitome of virtue and innocence and uncensored creativity is not necessarily mischievous. Good and evil, virtue and vice are not easily defined or distinguished; they interplay and exchange places all the time, and to understand one, we must understand the other.This switching of rules and blurring of boundaries will leave you with some serious questions about the nature of art and its effect on the human mind; is it liberating or sin-provoking? Does it build identities or corrupt souls? Should it be censored or not? And, in the first place, what exactly should be called 'art'? Whatever side you're on, the movie will upset your former convictions and stir countless questions in your head.The story is beautifully and grippingly developed. However, the exquisite performance of Rush, Winslet, Caine and Phoenix is what gave shape and soul to the film. Geofrrey Rush's depiction of the Marquis de Sade is hauntingly unforgettable. Kate Winslet dealt with her role as the innocent, yet playful, chambermaid Madeline with professional ease and confidence. The whole cast seemed to be in great harmony actually.The movie is not about obscene and erotic literature per se. It just gives an extreme example, that could pretty much be applied to anything, of how far the artistic expression could go, and also what suppression of creativity could lead us to.

minamurray Place is early 19th century France, a handsome but cold place of elegance, squalor and violence, and "witty" porn writer Marquis De Sade (Geoffrey Rush) has sent to Charenton asylum, albeit for political reasons rather than insanity (at least in real life). Asylum is led by kind Catholic priest (Joaquin Phoenix as rather sympathetic character who was apparently very short and hunchbacked in real life) and he has scandalous notion that mentally ill do not need torture. Gasp! Where is this world going to, if filthy perverts cannot torture insane? Soon, De Sade's writings - which later inspired such celluloid filth than Salo - are somehow "liberating" whole France to orgy and enraging Napoleon, when laundry maid is carrying the smut out, turning Marquis as trashy bestsellerist in the vein of Stephen King. Michael Caine has chilling role of outwardly respectable but sleazy pervert, who gets his kick by torturing insane and raping his young porn-reading wife, and Rush does not physically resemble De Sade, albeit complaints seems not come from only desire to historical accuracy but mucky morality worthy of De Sade: being filthy scatological perv and sadist, totally sane but locked in asylum, is somehow better if the perpetrator is not short and fat. Why his character openly courts danger and torture when he gets possibility to keep his cushy lifestyle, if he just does not publish his stories and endanger anyone, is something I cannot fathom. More entertaining than horribly wooden Sade (2000), but screenwriter Doug Wright who has adapted his own play lets historical inaccuracies gallop horribly wild, especially in the tragic - and frankly heavyhanded - ending.