Baise-Moi began as a torrid
novel, Virginie Despentes’ 1995 Gallic bestseller about two young
women on a sex-and-serial killing rampage across France. Six years
later, Despentes, 31, a first-time filmmaker, teamed with Coralie
Trinh Thi, 24, co-writer and co-director, to bring Baise-Moi to the
screen, with its hard-core sex, lowlife sleaze, and murderous slut
heroines gloriously intact. A distaff Going Places, what a friend
aptly described as "Thelma & Louise on crack."
I interviewed both women at the
2000 Toronto International Film Festival, in promotion of
Baise-Moi’s North American premiere. Spunky and down-to-earth, they
aren’t exactly film school types, though they share a friendship
with Gaspar Noe; and Despentes is a fan of the rigorous cinema of
Maurice Pialat. Completing each other’s thoughts, they proved
light-hearted about their bloody movie, at ease about Baise-Moi’s
in-your-face explicit sex.
"The movie is quite near my novel,
it has the spirit of the novel," said Despentes. "The women, Manu
and Nadine, weren’t as pretty in the book, but they talked much
more, they had more theories. But even in the book, there was no
justification given for their crimes, nothing about what happened in
their childhood."
"They behave like Zorro!" Trinh Thi
added. "There’s no idea of justice, or punishment."
In book and movie, the female
protagonists murder women as easily, and as mercilessly, as they
assassinate men. A willful foiling of a man-hating reading of the
tale?
"We wanted them to kill everybody,"
Despentes said, and described the potential victims: "People are at
the wrong place at the wrong moment. Some people are lucky and live.
Some people aren’t."
An innocent woman in the movie who
goes to a bank machine?
"Bad idea!" Despentes laughed,
recalling the grotesque killing of that woman.
Trinh Thi said, "But we chose the
victims, the characters didn’t. It’s not a revenge against men. But
if there were more men than women murdered, that’s our problem."
They both laughed.
The two leads, Raffaela Anderson
and Karen Bach, were discovered in a half-documentary, half-fiction
film, Exhibition ‘99, in which ten porno actresses were interviewed
as themselves between sexual interludes. "These two were different,"
said Trinh Thi. "The little one, Raffaela, was really funny. The big
one, Karen, looked like she’d beat someone up. It was a great
pleasure working with them."
"We didn’t know our audience ahead
of time," Despantes said. "I did think of young girls because I’d
have liked to see this kind of movie as a teenager. But I didn’t
expect men to be so uncomfortable with the movie--like it’s a war
movie against them! Maybe our women are too strong to be thought
sexy."
"Because having sex is shown in a
natural way, like what they eat, like the murders they commit,"
Trinh Thi said.
"We’ve seen movies forever with
women badly treated, or not even in the story," Despantes said.
"It’s just a balance."
I throw out a facile Freudian
reading: the women are so violent because, though turned-on to each
other, they never make love, even at the climax of a very erotic
scene in which they dance together in their underwear.
"It’s a male problem, being
homosexual and not doing it," Despantes said, dismissing my theory.
"If you are not a lesbian, you are not a lesbian. As for the
dancing: it was a total joy that males in the audience are sure
they’ll sleep together--and then nothing!"
"Surprise!" Trinh Thi piped in.
Isn’t the Baise-Moi non-suicide
ending a conscious retort to the soupy double death of Thelma &
Louise?
"I didn’t think of Thelma &
Louise," Despantes said, "but I like Thelma & Louise. I like
Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis. The jumping with the car? It’s
prettier than Baise-Moi, but I like it."
Trinh Thi agreed. "I saw Thelma
& Louise. I have nothing against it. Quite a good movie."
Despantes met Trinh Thi three years
ago, when the latter was appearing hardcore in an eye-opening Gaspar
Noe "safe sex" promo for French television.
Trinh Thi: "We got close, closer,
we had lots of theories in commmon about women and sex."
Despantes: "We enoy talking,
talking, talking, about music, what we find funny, what we find
stupid. When we decided to do the movie with porn actresses, we
didn’t have to think about that."
And they both describe themselves
as feminists.
Despantes: "Maybe some women don’t
know about the women’s movement--but I was born in 1969, born with
contraception and a chance to work. I’m very egocentric, and I like
to earn money and have power. Life is a beautiful adventure, and I
wouldn’t want to have the life given my mother."
Trinh Thi: "Two years ago I
wouldn’t say that I was a feminist but that I was an equal of men,
In reality, the last battleground is that women don’t have the right
to control sex. That’s why, when I was 18, I made porn. Also,
because people thought it was evil, and I didn’t."
Despantes: "I’m from a little
unknown town. I was a punk rocker, a singer in a band. For ten
years, music culture was the most important thing in my life. I got
into prostitution, occasionally, for a few years, and then I wrote
the book."
Trinh Thi: "I’m from Paris. I was a
literature major, and that was too easy in a strange way, and I
started acting in porn while in school. I stopped my studies three
months before my baccalaureate. I was very surprised to be a porn
star--in just a few months, working just a few days a month. It was
even easier than school!"
In Toronto, the two filmmakers of
Baise-Moi were hoping for an American theatrical showing. "We’ve
sold it everywhere else," Despantes said. "In France, it’s
forbidden. In the US, nobody wants it!"
Well, perhaps with some cuts of
violence, some scissoring of sex.
"Then there’s nothing left!"
Despantes said. "But maybe Baise-Moi will be released in America on
video. It’s strange to think how hardcore movies are today. Compared
to them, we are little girls!"
From
Gerald
Peary
<
BACK