Aficionados of art house cinema may be aware that American
audiences in 2001 were treated to (or subjected to, depending on
your point of view) a surprisingly large number of international
films that dealt frankly and explicitly with sex. This isn't the
first time non-porno movies have featured graphic acts of sexual
intercourse. (There are some folks who are going to argue that any
movie that shows people having sex is pornographic. I could probably
spend a long time arguing semantics on this issue, but for the sake
of brevity, let's just operate under the assumption that there is a
different intent between the kinds of movies I'm talking about and
the movies that are kept behind the curtain at your local video
store.) It's been going on at least as far back as 1976, when
Japanese director Nagisa Oshima made the extremely explicit In the Realm of the Senses. Of course,
all of these movies have come from Europe or Asia. Americans are
still way too uptight about sex to show established actors doing the
nasty on screen. But of all the movies in this sub genre, few have
been as controversial or as provocative as Baise-Moi.
The title was
translated for American audiences as Rape
Me, which isn't exactly correct. The literal translation
is Fuck Me. Naturally, not too
many theatre managers are going to slap that on their marquees, so
Americans were left with a title with a much different meaning than
the rest of the world. On its most simple terms, Baise-Moi is a grungy, hardcore version
of Thelma & Louise. The movie
follows Nadine (Karen Bach) and Manu (Raffaëla Anderson) as they
take a road trip across France, fueled by drugs, booze, murder, and
lots and lots of sex. Needless to say, this is not a movie for the
squeamish or easily offended - the violence is as graphic and harsh
as the sex and, often, the two are combined. The scene that will
test most viewers' endurance comes early on, with an extremely
disturbing rape scene that is almost certainly the most graphic
portrayal of this crime ever filmed. It's a horrifyingly real
sequence that will either cause you to stop the movie or hang in to
see how much further over the edge it's going to go.
Written
and directed by Virginie Despentes (who also wrote the novel upon
which the movie is based) and Coralie Trinh Thi, Baise-Moi is intended to shock and
provoke extreme reactions. It's hard to imagine anybody being
utterly indifferent to this movie. You'll either despise it or…
well, maybe not love it but certainly be impressed at the raw
emotion that is captured on screen. Personally, I wasn't sure what I
thought after I watched this movie… which, for me, is a good thing.
I appreciate movies that force you to think about what you've seen
and don't simply provoke a knee-jerk reaction, whether it's positive
or negative. In the end though, Baise-Moi is a movie unlike any other
I've seen. It's a rough, nihilistic film that does what it sets out
to do: it forces you to consider what drove these women to
this.
Remstar has released
Baise-Moi as a pretty ragged DVD. The
movie was shot on digital video and is supposed to look rough-edged
and dark. That's all well and good, but I've seen other DV movies
transferred to DVD that have looked much better than this. The video
here is so grainy that it sometimes looks like it was transferred by
aiming a camera straight at a TV playing a VHS copy of the movie. To
make matters worse, it's presented in a full-frame only aspect
ratio. I don't know what ratio the movie was shot in, but there are
scenes in this where actors are bisected on either side of the
frame. To me, this either suggests that this is a badly cropped
full-frame presentation of a 1.85:1 film or the movie was shot by an
incredibly stupid cinematographer in the first place. I would buy
either explanation. The audio track is what it is. Nothing special
is going on here but at least you can hear the dialogue and the
music and effects sound like they were correctly mixed.
The
extras are also kept to a minimum. There are galleries of posters
and photos from the movie, the trailer and a "Flashcard" movie from
the website. The disc also includes one of the stupidest extras I've
ever seen. If you select "website" from the special features menu,
you get to see four text-heavy screen captures of the movie's web
site. Unless your TV is the size of a garage door, you're never
going to be able to read what these things say, so the whole thing
is pretty pointless. Most interesting is a selection of excerpts
from reviews of the movie, with opinions ranging the gamut from
"exhilarating" to "tripe". I do agree with one of the comments from
the negative reviews, which lambastes the music as some of the worst
French heavy metal ever recorded.
Baise-Moi is not a movie for everybody
and even though I appreciated the film, I can't imagine that I'll
ever want to watch it again. Still, adventurous movie-lovers will
definitely want to check it out to see how far the envelope of shock
cinema is being pushed these days. It's a far cry from the days of I Spit on Your
Grave.
From The
Digital Bits
<
BACK