496: Baise-Moi (review)
'Bout time I did another one of these, and timely, what with my recent learnin's of dirty French words...
"Baise-Moi (Fuck Me)"*
In this heart-warming buddy-road flick, adapted by Virginie Despentes from her best-selling novel, two Parisian women, frustrated with their lives, take a scenic tour of France, finding romance and laughter along the way...**
Yes, this is one of a slew of movies I sought out for their infamously explicit content--and one of the most infamous ones, to boot. In most countries, it didn't even make it to theatres, the conservative rating boards finding it so offensive (though most of them, apparently, didn't even watch it). This has more to do, I think, with the nature of the acts themselves--making them even more raw was prolly just salt in the patriarchal wound.
Which is exactly the point of this movie.
The most explicit scene is a rape, with full on vaginal penetration; another has Nadine, apparently a hooker, looking rather bored while one of her johns pounds away; yet another--my personal favorite--has the two girls just randomly having sex with two guys they pick up in a bar. Nadine kicks out one for giving some misogynist lip and they then kill the other once they've had their carnal way with him.
Of these, the rape scene is perhaps the most important, and the movie is worth seeing for this one scene alone, because of this uncomfortably explicit nature. What is so fascinating is that the way the man's penis penetrates doesn't look so different from normal sex. Most mainstream representations of rape seek to "other"ize it on par with murder--something so violent and perverted no normal, sane human being would ever even consider it.
What makes this scene chilling is in the way it banalizes rape, particularly in the different reactions of the two women actually being raped. Manu's friend is almost comically melodramatic, screaming and writhing like the wounder animal she is; Manu, however, refuses to put up any fight or even react at all. Both approaches eventually cause the punks to get bored and move on, but the best exchange in the film comes after, as Manu's friend is dragging her clothes back on: "How could you, Manu? How could you do nothing?!"
To which Manu coldly and pragmatically replies: "It could be worse. We're still alive, aren't we?"
Another interesting feature of the film is the way the men use contempt (usually with the word "bitch" coming into play) as a way to verbally subjugate women. Also, what sets Manu off is not the rape itself, obviously, but her brother's reaction to it. When she denies him the manly satisfaction of avenging her, he instead turns on her for not showing any sense of shame. (This is a social phenomena most eloquently explored in Brownmiller's "Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape" in which men view a woman's rape as an affront to their own masculine sense of property over them.)
Which isn't to say the film is an explicit feminist tract--it's not a Breillat film. It's more like a realist's version of "Thelma and Louise"--and if you've seen that film, you'll be able to easily guess some elements of the plot, but at the same time, it plays with that assumption, leading to some unexpected twists.
All in all, I was surprised by how enjoyable it was. Well, if you have a hard time dealing with explicit sex and violence and an essentially nihilistic outlook on the gender war, then no, you probably won't enjoy it. But for a open-minded cynic like myself, it was a delightful surprise. See, I thought it was gonna be trashy***... But the French prove, yet again, that they always make an at least decent to good film, no matter what. 4 stars.
_________________________________________________
*In some releases, it was translated as 'rape' me, but both meanings actually apply in this movie...
**Ironically, I'm not being completely sarcastic here...
***Which isn't to say it doesn't have the look and feel of a B-moive--but this is French cinema we're talking about; they have less than a fraction of Hollywood's budget and 10 times the artistry.
"Baise-Moi (Fuck Me)"*
Click to viewIn this heart-warming buddy-road flick, adapted by Virginie Despentes from her best-selling novel, two Parisian women, frustrated with their lives, take a scenic tour of France, finding romance and laughter along the way...**
Yes, this is one of a slew of movies I sought out for their infamously explicit content--and one of the most infamous ones, to boot. In most countries, it didn't even make it to theatres, the conservative rating boards finding it so offensive (though most of them, apparently, didn't even watch it). This has more to do, I think, with the nature of the acts themselves--making them even more raw was prolly just salt in the patriarchal wound.
Which is exactly the point of this movie.
The most explicit scene is a rape, with full on vaginal penetration; another has Nadine, apparently a hooker, looking rather bored while one of her johns pounds away; yet another--my personal favorite--has the two girls just randomly having sex with two guys they pick up in a bar. Nadine kicks out one for giving some misogynist lip and they then kill the other once they've had their carnal way with him.
Of these, the rape scene is perhaps the most important, and the movie is worth seeing for this one scene alone, because of this uncomfortably explicit nature. What is so fascinating is that the way the man's penis penetrates doesn't look so different from normal sex. Most mainstream representations of rape seek to "other"ize it on par with murder--something so violent and perverted no normal, sane human being would ever even consider it.
What makes this scene chilling is in the way it banalizes rape, particularly in the different reactions of the two women actually being raped. Manu's friend is almost comically melodramatic, screaming and writhing like the wounder animal she is; Manu, however, refuses to put up any fight or even react at all. Both approaches eventually cause the punks to get bored and move on, but the best exchange in the film comes after, as Manu's friend is dragging her clothes back on: "How could you, Manu? How could you do nothing?!"
To which Manu coldly and pragmatically replies: "It could be worse. We're still alive, aren't we?"
Another interesting feature of the film is the way the men use contempt (usually with the word "bitch" coming into play) as a way to verbally subjugate women. Also, what sets Manu off is not the rape itself, obviously, but her brother's reaction to it. When she denies him the manly satisfaction of avenging her, he instead turns on her for not showing any sense of shame. (This is a social phenomena most eloquently explored in Brownmiller's "Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape" in which men view a woman's rape as an affront to their own masculine sense of property over them.)
Which isn't to say the film is an explicit feminist tract--it's not a Breillat film. It's more like a realist's version of "Thelma and Louise"--and if you've seen that film, you'll be able to easily guess some elements of the plot, but at the same time, it plays with that assumption, leading to some unexpected twists.
All in all, I was surprised by how enjoyable it was. Well, if you have a hard time dealing with explicit sex and violence and an essentially nihilistic outlook on the gender war, then no, you probably won't enjoy it. But for a open-minded cynic like myself, it was a delightful surprise. See, I thought it was gonna be trashy***... But the French prove, yet again, that they always make an at least decent to good film, no matter what. 4 stars.
_________________________________________________
*In some releases, it was translated as 'rape' me, but both meanings actually apply in this movie...
**Ironically, I'm not being completely sarcastic here...
***Which isn't to say it doesn't have the look and feel of a B-moive--but this is French cinema we're talking about; they have less than a fraction of Hollywood's budget and 10 times the artistry.