“ANNALS OF PLEASURE AND PAIN”
(True Affairs of the Marquis De Sade)
Genre: Drama. Biography. History.
Logline: Riotous and revealing, this is a devilishly seductive feature film about one of the most misunderstood, vilified, and most influential men in history.
Quick Pitch
“This will be the most impure tale ever…”
Those are the first words in this riotous film bio about the brazen author of Philosophy In The Boudoir, Justine, and The Adversities Of Virtue. Shattering in its base implications, crackling with eye-popping sex, chases, hilarious situations and shocking reversals, Sade’s story is not just wickedly engaging, it abounds with startling revelations about one of the least understood but most vilified, most influential men in history.
Born at the crossroads of history during the unprecedented era of social upheaval surrounding the American and French Revolutions, Sade’s perversions exemplify the abuses of the ruling noble class, and accelerate their downfall, but he also champions such radical free thinking and action that some of his bold new socio-political theories are embraced by leaders of the Revolution, and soon afford him high-ranking status in the Reign of Terror he helps cause!
Along with many extreme elements of Sade’s philosophies, this stunning film dares to propose that everything from his moral perversions to his powerful endorsements of free expression and thought, are some of the most important contributions underpinning the past 300 years of civilization. This movie makes it hard to argue against. Sade’s life and work stand for pushing the ideals, truth and boundaries of freedom to their logical behavioral extremes, especially those of pleasure/pain and fetish. He rules those domains like no other, he codified them, while the strength and validity of our own everyday freedoms may be measured by our tolerance toward even the most distasteful or unusual expressions of sexuality and behavior.
Here is a film which embodies the dark horse elements of raw impact and cult appeal in the most radical entertaining ways, created for an eager world and worthy of a visionary filmmaker finally connecting our truest and darkest past to our present era of unbridled excesses. This romp of a movie reveals the truth about the exploration and struggle for behavioral freedoms over the past three centuries. No other Sade bio encompasses the scope of all the historical contexts he lived through, and he foreshadowed. Here is a film that not only embodies the unifying truths and impact of his legacy today, it does not protect or disavow the darkest corners of our own souls.
Read ACT ONE “ANNALS OF PLEASURE AND PAIN (True Affairs of the Marquis De Sade)”
