Baise Moi

Two women; rape victim Manu (Rafaella Anderson) and prostitute Nadine (Karen Bach) go on a rampage of sex and murder through France.

I feel that with this film I ought to begin with a warning. Baise Moi is not a film for everyone. It basically consists of graphic violence and hardcore sex almost all the way through. Not, one suspects, a film to take your granny to.

I have read two types of reviews of Baise Moi. Type A proclaims it a feminist masterpiece. Type B dismisses it as nothing more than violent, badly made, porn. This review will be neither of those.

F**k Me is in fact the more appropriate translation of the title Baise Moi but was rejected in favour of Rape Me because F**k Me sounded too much like a come on. This is not alien territory as far as Baise Moi is concerned, where it goes censorship follows. The film was given an almost unheard of X certificate in its native France. Here too it has met with problems; BBFC have cut 10 seconds of unsimulated sex (specifically a penetration shot) from a rape scene near the start of the film. It is this slightly cut version that I am reviewing.

Baise Moi is based on a novel by Virginie Despentes, one of the film's directors (the other, Coralie Trinh Thi, came to directing from a career in porn). From the start the film is shocking in the explicitness of both its sex and violence. The rape scene comes perhaps 10 minutes into the film; it is prolonged and deeply disturbing, not least because the sex (despite the cut) is clearly unsimulated. Much has been made in the past of how graphic, prolonged and difficult to watch the rape at the end of The Accused is; Baise Moi tops it on all counts. Many people would dismiss the scene as unnecessary. I disagree, the rape sets Manu on her course, it's the first event that really drives the plot of the film. It needs to be explicit so that we believe her actions later.

What turns Nadine into the killer she becomes is less clear; her first murder seems motiveless and this is a great problem with the film. While it is easy to see what drives Manu to attack men it is harder to see why Nadine does the same (though her life as a prostitute, shown in hardcore detail early in the film, seems to be used as one of the triggers)

The first two sex scenes (Nadine's trick and Manu's rape) are necessary and propel the plot forward. Though it is highly debatable whether being unsimulated actually makes their point any stronger but after these scenes the sex (which remains unsimulated throughout) seems slotted in. Were the sex and the killing related it would be easy to see why the sex scenes are kept in. The fact that the two are mutually exclusive must lead to a questioning of the directors motives in leaving the sex in.

The violence is just as explicit as the sex (though the violence, of course, is simulated) two moments, both Manu's doing, stand out. In the first she shoots a man (I won't say who as I don't want to spoil the plot) in the head. I've only seen one shooting in a film that is as convincing and that is at the end of Boy's Don't Cry. The second is certainly new cinematic territory for me and fortunately we are spared the aftermath of the moment Manu puts her gun between a man's buttocks and fires. The violence however is justified. Not only does it drive the story it is the story and it unites the two main characters by giving them no option but to trust each other. On top of this I am all for explicit violence in cinema for adults. I would rather a film acknowledge the results of violence (as this film does) than ignore them (as in a ludicrous moment in Con Air wherein Nicolas Cage is shot in the arm and not only keeps moving but hits the shooter with his injured arm).

Karen Bach and Rafaella Anderson; both, as you might expect, former porn actresses acquit themselves as well as can be expected. This is not really an actor’s film. The script does them few favors (If the subtitles are at all accurate) but their performances (Bach's in particular) are brave and convincing. By the end, uncomfortable though it was, I had come to, not like them, but certainly hope that both of the characters lived through the film.

The directors, both debuting, wisely keep the visuals very simple. The only moment that doesn't quite work is the rape scene, which is poorly shot using a hand-held camera, which is constantly moving, making the scene even more difficult to watch.

I was caught up in the story of Manu, Nadine and their crimes. To a degree that I wish they had cut all the extraneous sex and simply concentrated on the crime aspect of the story. Baise Moi is not the revolutionary feminist piece that some have read it as but to dismiss it as nothing more than porn is facile and wrong. There is a great film within Baise Moi, but this isn't it.