The Marquis de Sade is a notorious figure in the history of French literature, whose lurid and sadistic (the term is literally named after him) narratives both shocked and challenged not only his original 18th century readers but subsequent generations through to the present day. It is no surprise to see that Sade has inspired film adaptations, both of his novels – Pasolini’s Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975) is one for the ages – and of the man himself. My personal favourite among the Sade-inspired films is Marquis, a 1989 French-Belgian production directed by Henri Xhonneux.

The film presents Sade (François Marthouret) imprisoned in pre-revolutionary France. He has been arrested for defecating on a cross, and is strongly suspected of a violent sexual assault. While passing the time inventing new and provocative erotic stories, he is witness to a growing plot to overthrow the King of France.

While this seems a relatively conventional basis for a comedic drama, it is in the execution that Xhonneux’s film really stands out. For one thing, all of the characters are anthropomorphic animals; that is, human bodies with animal heads. The Marquis himself is a dog. Other characters are cows, pigs, and other creatures. It adds a wonderful thematic aesthetic to the piece. While Sade wrote horrifying things, he lived during horrifying times. He was in one of his periodic stints in prison when the Revolution struck. From his window at the Bastille he could see the pits where the headless corpses of his fellow aristocrats were dumped. It is such a smart choice to portray the conspiring, lascivious figures of 18th century France in such a fashion.

Then there is Colin (Valérie Kling), which is the name given to Sade’s talking penis. The character is executed as a puppet, with whom the Marquis regularly converses while alone in his cell. It is Colin that devises the various stories and scenarios that Sade writes down. The Marquis loves Colin’s stories so much that he builds a miniature puppet theatre which sits on his lap and gives Colin a backdrop for his crude invented narratives. It is an utterly bizarre addition to the film, but it is also its most inspired element. It is perverse, surreal, and hugely entertaining.

Marquis is co-directed by Roland Topor, the French comic artist whose work was pivotal to the early success of the satirical magazine Charlie-Hebdo, and who also co-wrote and designed René Laloux’s 1973 animated feature Fantastic Planet. You can feel Topor’s influence throughout the film, in its gloomy design, its strange animal faces, and its strong and unsettling sense of the absurd.

Despite its strange appeal, Marquis has generally fallen into obscurity. It is most easily found via bootleg uploads on YouTube and the like, and waits for a boutique distributor to brush it off and deliver it to a new audience via physical media. Once seen, it tends to stick in the memory – films this strange and unexpectedly absurd tend to linger in the mind, and rise up whenever dedicated cineastes debate the weirder end of cinema.