Do It Again

The controversial Baise-moi may break ground, but it feels like a retread.

Baise-moi

Written and directed by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi.
A Film Fixx release.



This is a gun: Raffaella Anderson and Karen Bach find someone who annoys them in Baise-Moi.

The posters for Baise-moi don’t read "Banned in France!", but they might as well. Stirring up North American controversy since its showing at Toronto last fall, the film — which was, indeed, banned in France — has been painted as everything from hardcore porn thinly masquerading as art to a work of transgressive feminism that challenges the boundaries of art-house cinema. Certainly the film’s co-writer and -director Virginie Despentes would push for the latter. "A woman’s right to show off her sexuality has been perverted by men who have a problem dealing with femininity," she writes in the director’s statement, included with the press notes. "Women shouldn’t have to deal with men’s silly little hangups."

Who could argue with that? No one, of course, which seems to be the point. Baise-moi is controversial, troubling, questionable, incoherent, but once it’s safely contained within the language of mainstream feminism, all questions should, presumably, evaporate. Two women who’ve had enough abuse throw off the bounds of society and proceed to do whatever they want until the law catches up with them. Sounds an awful lot like that nice Thelma & Louise, doesn’t it?

Trouble is, like Thelma & Louise, Baise-moi is cheap entertainment masquerading as political thought, with an added soupçon of pornographic daredevilry. There’s no coherence, no moral logic to the film’s exploits; it’s simply an in-your-face thrill ride, jabbing wildly at buttons until everyone’s had theirs pressed.

Nadine (Karen Bach) and Manu (Rafaëlla Anderson) are women without much to lose; Nadine’s ties to the world consist of a desperate junkie boyfriend and a nagging roommate, Manu’s of an abusive brother and a friend with whom she is brutally raped near the beginning of the film. (Baise-moi’s title, incidentally, is deliberately mistranslated as "Rape Me," although no such sentiment is ever expressed in the film. Why that phrase is considered less offensive than the literal "Fuck Me" is a matter to ponder.) Pushed over the edge by her brother’s callow reaction to her rape, Manu shoots him between the eyes and lights out for parts unknown.

The beginning of Nadine’s journey is a little more confused: she’s driven off when her roommate takes issue with Nadine’s boyfriend leaving his drug paraphernalia around the house. Rather than take any more of her crap, Nadine throttles her and sets off to see said boyfriend, who’s promptly shot to death in a drug deal gone bad.

Severed thus from any form of social connection, the two women meet by chance and embark on a cross-France fucking-and-killing spree. Typically, the former is what’s caused all the fuss. Bach and Anderson, both porn actresses, do indeed hold nothing back in their depiction of Nadine and Manu’s exploits. Directed by Despentes and co-writer/director Coralie Trinh Thi (who herself doesn’t lack for experience in the adult-film world), the sex scenes are flat, mostly unexpressive, the film’s low-grade-DV look giving them a poisoned, washed-out look. The sole exception is a scene where Manu and Nadine both go out and pick men up, then return to their twin-bed motel room and proceed to have their way with them, spending more time eyeing each other than the men they’re screwing. The men are there to be used, no more. The only interruption comes when one of the men suggests it would be "hot" to see the two of them sixty-nine. Though, in the scheme of things, he lucks out — Manu and Nadine kill people for far lesser offenses — he’s unceremoniously booted out of the room, while Manu gives Nadine a turn on the remaining fellow.

Overall, though, Baise-moi focuses on nihilistic thrills; Manu and Nadine kill people for crudely trying to pick them up, for getting in the way, in one case for simply trying to put on a condom before having sex. "We’re the fucking condom dickhead killers!" shouts Manu. (When she laments their inability to come up with "witty lines," you can’t argue.) One woman is executed for her ATM card, one man for the use of his car. Some killings follow hard on the heels of sexist transgressions, some are merely opportunistic. Manu, for example, never seems to consider taking revenge on her rapists; her face during the violently graphic scene is harsh, impassive, as if she’s already willed herself beyond caring about such things.

The question of whether Baise-moi is "art" or "pornography" is better left to people who find that a meaningful distinction. It is, certainly, not good art: poorly shot, crudely reasoned, sophomorically nihilistic. And while it’s hard to argue that it’s not transgressive, it doesn’t feel transgressive, merely clumsy. It’s not fair to say there’s nothing going on, but there’s not much. When the film runs out of steam, it abruptly ends, reveling in its own meaninglessness. You’ve been used, and when the movie’s done, you’re simply shown the door.