Special Event: Heiner Müller’s Quartett

Published in 1981, Heiner Müller's Quartett is one of the cult texts of contemporary German literature, a play that, despite being immediately banned as "pornographic" and "immoral" in the GDR, has a long history of performances, having been taken to the stage by many renowned directors and actors all over the world.

At LEFFEST, we will present a "world premiere" of Quartett with Fanny Ardant and Gérard Depardieu, two icons of French cinema and theatre who have worked together several times.

It's a reading of Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos, which Müller (poet and playwright who has worked with the Berliner Ensemble and the Volksbühne) says he read "diagonally", or to put it another way, "devoured, because it's faster", and then "understood" in all its "power". To write a play about desire and manipulation, a game of mirrors – is it two, is it four? The Viscount de Valmont, the Marquise de Merteuil; or even Valmont as Madame Tourvel, and Merteuil as the young Volanges. Who seduces, who is seduced, in this game that pushes manipulation to the limit and is a harbinger of death, between "A salon before the French Revolution" and "A bunker after the Third World War"?