The new French film Baise-Moi arrives amid a storm of controversy, and rightly so. The title, translated somewhat disingenuously for the American press as Rape Me is a little off; the literal translation is Fuck Me, which is what I said to myself after I realized I’d sullied an otherwise pleasant Friday morning by watching this tripe. By their own admission, the directors of Baise-Moi are attempting to subvert the dominant male sex-and-violence paradigm for their own ends by turning the tables and letting women blow off some steam (and heads, and penises) and tackle the role of sexual aggressors in a fashion that would give Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer a run for its money. There’s nothing wrong with that idea at all, in fact I applaud it, but Baise-Moi shoots itself in the crotch by dint of its sheer amateurishness. Shot on digital video with a mercifully brief running time, it’s all inept, shaky camerawork (realism!) and single-mission characterizations that display all the subtlety of a sledgehammer to the testicles. It makes you think, alright: It makes you think you ought to lay off French cinema for awhile if this is what’s coming down the pike these days. Manu and Nadine (Anderson and Bach) play a pair of young women who decide to act out those presumably long-standing fantasies of violence against predatory (and not so predatory) men when one is raped and the other commits murder. The rape scene, which features prominently in the film’s first third, is a marvel of horrific bad taste. Director Thi and both lead actresses come from the French porn industry and the brutal, virtually unwatchable double rape (one wasn’t enough, apparently, to make the film’s point adequately) has penetration and requires a cast-iron stomach to view (as does the rest of the film). The filmmakers think that gussying up their “arty” film with some hard-core action will lend it another level of honesty, but all it does is make you sick inside and ruin your weekend. Granted, this could be their intention. From the rape on forward the pair go on the lam (shades of Thelma & Louise in hell) and begin seducing virtually every male they run into. Then they kill them, often in the most repugnant ways imaginable. The sex and violence in Baise-Moi – and that’s pretty much all there is to it – are degrading and disturbing. I’ve seen 15-minute porno loops that display more tenderness toward the human condition than this nihilistic broadside. The film’s obvious messages, which decry everything from the state of male-dominated Hollywood violence to women’s second-class positions in a hypersexual society, are surely nothing new, and by sinking to the gutter-muck level of the very things they appear to despise, the filmmakers have rendered their arguments null, void, and somewhat absurd. About as titillating as a dead infant, and chock-full of the most unexpressive and predatory sexuality I’ve ever seen (not to mention some of the absolute worst French heavy metal ever heard), Baise-Moi makes films like John McNaughton’s aforementioned Henry and Wes Craven’s rape-and-revenge fantasy Last House on the Left look like modern classics. It’s pornography of the most depressing sort.
This article appears in July 27 • 2001.