| BAISE-MOI Directors: Virginie Despenetes & Coralie Trinh Thi Distributor: Film Fixx, with Remstar Distribution Site: baisemoithemovie.com "We had to go to a place that everyone tries to avoid. We want to be so in your face, that we will end up in your mind, with images that you just can't ignore." Co-Director Coralie Trinh Thi This unrated (i.e. "X" rated) French film is a gleeful combination of Thelma & Louise, Natural Born Killers and something by Russ Meyer. Set up to provoke, titilate and anger, the film is bound to cause controversy. But if you go in with an open mind (and you probably will if you are an art-house type) then you will most likely be no more than mildly amused. Two women, Manu (Raffaela Anderson) and Nadine (Karen Bach), have had tough lives.Toward the beginning Manu suffers a horrible rape and on top of this she lives with a boyfriend who is an overbearing jerk. Nadine, on the otherhand, is a prostitute who has been degraded for years. On the same day (at the same hour) Manu kills her boyfriend and Nadine kills her nagging roommate (a woman) and then they both meet in the street and embark on a road trip to clear their heads, get out their sexual frustrations and destroy any men they don't like. The sex is real (the actresses were porn stars) and the violence is bloody and to add to the authenticity of the mayhem the film is shot in grainy, dirty, out-of-focus Digital Video. The film makes no pretenses to being anything but a cheap looking work in which the woman play femme fatales whom we cheer for rather than hate - although some may hate them since they are both tough women. The film's strength and weakness is in its soundtrack which jams along from start to finish. Ironcally, though, the music is what makes the film less effective because it is so good it subverts almost all of the hard edged scenes. Other thaN a really brutal rape scene in the beginning, the film is a free (and often funny) ride. The only real political message in the film is that the traditional roles women are expected to play are reversed. It's the women here who sleep with whomever they want and freely kill when they want. But since the latter activity can only happen (legally) in movies then the real message is that women are now allowed to do all of these things in movies. Call it progress. - Matt Langdon Read Baise-moi blurbs here HOME |