Baise-moi (2000)

Directors:

Virginie Despentes
Coralie (co-director)

Writers:

Coralie (writer)
Virginie Despentes (novel)

Release Date:

28 June 2000 (France)

Genre:

Thriller

Plot:

Two young women, marginalised by society, go on a destructive tour of sex and violence. Breaking norms and killing men - and shattering the complacency of polite cinema audiences.

Plot Keywords:

Sex | Violence | Revenge | Friend | Real Sex

Awards:

3 nominations

Cast

Karen Lancaume	...	Nadine (as Karen Bach)
Raffaëla Anderson	...	Manu
Céline Beugnot	...	Blonde at Billiards
Adama Niane	...	Boy at Billiards
Christophe Claudy Landry	...	Guy at Counter
Tewfik Saad	...	Server
Delphine McCarty	...	Severine
Ouassini Embarek	...	Radouan
Patrick Kodjo Topou	...	Big Thug (as Patrick-Kodjo Topou)
Lisa Marshall	...	Karla
Hacène Beddrouh	...	Lakim
Patrick Eudeline	...	Francis
Ian Scott	...	Rapist #1
Philippe Houillez	...	Rapist #2
Steven Jhonsson	...	Rapist #3

Also Known As:

Rape Me (International: English title) (USA)
Baise-moi (Australia)
Fuck Me (International: English title) (literal title)

Runtime:

77 min | Colombia:72 min | Japan:74 min

Country:

France

Language:

French

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Dolby SR

Certification:

Canada:18 (New Brunswick/Nova Scotia/Prince Edward Island) | Canada:R (Alberta/British Columbia/Manitoba/Ontario/Saskatchewan) | Singapore:(Banned) | Iceland:16 (strong rating) | France:-18 (re-rating on appeal) | Portugal:M/18 | Ireland:18 (re-rating) | Japan:R-18 | Australia:Refused Classification (re-rating) (2002) | Australia:R (original rating) | Belgium:KNT | Canada:18+ (Québec) | Canada:R | Chile:18 | Finland:K-18 | France:-16 (original rating) | Germany:18 | Hong Kong:III (heavily cut) | Ireland:(Banned) | Italy:VM18 | Japan:R-15 (cut) | Luxembourg:17 | Netherlands:16 | New Zealand:R18 (with restriction) | Norway:18 | Peru:18 | South Africa:18 | Spain:18 | Sweden:15 | UK:18 (cut) | USA:Unrated | Germany:BPjM Restricted

Filming Locations:

Biarritz, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, France

Company:

Canal+

Trivia:

The film Nadine is watching while with her "client" is Seul contre tous (1998).

Quotes:

Manu: I've thought about taking a jump or burning alive. Self-immolation is pretty pretentious. After we finish in the Vosges, let's do the jump without the bungee.

Movie Connections:

Features Prison (1997) (V)

Soundtrack:

Goddamn City

Unpleasant, unnecessary.

This is one of the rare movies that I did not immediately discuss with my friends after watching it. This wasn't because it had particularly entranced or impressed me. The contrary, it had given me nothing at all.

Why? Because somehow, everything was so much overdone that I couldn't take this film seriously anymore. There was so much sex and violence that I got the strong impression that the film was trying very, very hard to be offensive, as if it was aiming at superlatives in ugliness, rather than in telling a convincing tale about two women caught in a spiral of crime.

Baise-moi had been described as "Thelma & Louise with actual sex" to me. Well, it is true that the main idea is similar. There are two women traveling through the country because they've committed crimes and know that their lives are finished now, that the police are going to catch them, and they decide that now that everything's over anyway, there is no way to hold back.

Baise-moi had been described as a feminist film where women, who had suffered from male dominance in the past, exact revenge upon the men that they encounter.

This is something that I had never interpreted into this film, simply because none of these women had ever been innocent, and because they do not just kill irresponsible, violent men, but also men that they seduce themselves, men that show the sense of wanting to do protected sex. And they kill women. No, they are in no way better than the characters that they encounter and murder in hideous, brutal ways.

How easily the "heroines" decide to murder, and how much pleasure they take in it, made it absolutely impossible for me to relate to them in any way, or even take them seriously. It was just all too much. Too much sex, too much violence. I got the feeling that sex and violence were only there in order to create a superlative in ugliness, rather than in conveying a story, or making a point.

Baise-moi left me with no impression, hadn't set me thinking, because it was so far removed from any real world. So constructed, unrealistic and over the top.

There was nothing that I could do with this film, there was simply nothing about it to think about, other than "Why did they make this terrible film?" Had the intense unpleasantness going on in this film, served a purpose, I'd easily accepted it. But since I found nothing, since the film's story appeared to be not more than an excuse to squeeze as much and as ugly sex as possible into one film... I filed it away under "unnecessary torture", decided to never ever, EVER, watch this film again, and I now consider this to be the worst film I've ever seen.

Worst, not just because it really isn't my cup of tea to watch people get raped, rape, have sex in other forms and kill one another... but because whatever it was that the makers wanted to tell the world with their film... if they wanted to say anything at all... it just didn't work. And there's nothing else that could save this film, because it's also filmed in such an ugly style.