‘Marquis’ (NR)

"Marquis" is a fascinatingly bizarre evocation of the sexual and intellectual passions of a certain M. de Sade, set during his imprisonment in the Bastille on the eve of the French Revolution and acted out by men and women masked as beasts but burdened with the most human of passions.

Imagine a blender churning R-rated Muppets, the fables of la Fontaine, both "Animal Farm" and "Animal House," "Marat/Sade" and "Me & Him" -- and you'll barely begin to imagine the perversely defined universe created by the French satirist and caricaturist Roland Topor, who who wrote the story (drawing on the works of de Sade) and served as art director. Henri Xhonneux directed this 1989 film, here making its Washington debut.

In Topor's world, Marquis is a decidely aristocratic canine who has been imprisoned in the Bastille for blasphemy (he's the Andres Serrano of his day). There, Marquis' constant companion is Colin, an animated and quite voluble penis with a mind of its own (which will be no surprise to the women of the world). Still, Marquis and Colin engage more in discourse than intercourse, discussing art and literature, as well as political and sexual freedom.

They argue: Colin accuses Marquis of being "a vain utopian, not down to earth like me," and criticizes his writing ("too many verbs") and his preference for words over action. Marquis accuses Colin of impulsiveness and vulgarity. Their main argument is over who's leading whom.

All this is played out in a prison environment in which Marquis, a tragic, bemused figure, is clearly the most moral figure. There's the warden, a masochistic rooster game for the ministrations of Juliette, a whip-wielding mare who is busily plotting revolution on the side. There's Dom Pompero, the camellike Jesuit priest who steals Marquis' writing for his own profit, and Ambert, the rattish and perpetually horny prison guard who is fixated on Marquis. There's the heifer Justine, unjustly imprisoned victim of a royal rape and chief pawn in political intrigue aimed at attributing the act and its consequences to Marquis.

There's also Lupino, the wolfish former police chief, and Pigonou, a raffish pork thief, and assorted minor characters artfully outfitted in masks designed by Jacques and Frederic Gastineau. These caricatures acting out human desires are described in the credits as "creatures," and they fall into a weird, unsettling middle world in which the very familiarity of their movements and expressions at first seem surreal. After a while, though, one forgets the masks, and the characters become vividly real.

Clearly, this is adult satire. And several clay-animation asides inspired by de Sade's writings are as erotically charged as their sources. Much of the film is suffused with the sexual fixations and violence of de Sade's writing and life, so it's no surprise that parts of "Marquis" are discomforting. Still, leave it to the French to give animal behavior a human face by giving human behavior an animal face.

"Marquis" in French with subtitles, is not rated but is definitely not for minors.