Baise Moi (2000)

Directed by: Virginie Despentes, Coralie Trinh Thi | 73 minutes | drama, thriller | Actors: Raffaëlla Anderson, Karen Bach, Delphine MacCarty, Lisa Marshall, Ouassini Embarek, Céline Beugnot, Adama Niane, Christophe Claudy Landry, Tewfik Saad

Violent, explicit, shocking, horrific, the forbidden movie, banned from many cinemas, rough and barbaric, pornographic, horrific, overly explicit use of alcohol and drugs etc. etc.

These are just some of the reactions the French film ‘Baise Moi’ (Fuck Me) evokes. Justly? In part, yes, the violence in the film is very intense and explicit and the sex scenes go so far that they actually belong in a porn movie, but to say that this movie should be banned is going too far.

The French film ‘Irréversible’ opens with a scene of violence that almost literally makes you puke and a later scene in which Monica Bellucci is raped in a tunnel is many times more repulsive than any scene in ‘Baise Moi’.

What makes this film different is the fact that it is a women’s movie and not in the sense of women. The film is made by two women and based on the book of the same name by director Virginie Despentes and it is about two women. If the film had just been made by one man and it was about two men doing these things, there probably wouldn’t have been so much fuss. What also contributed to the sensation during the release of this film are the then professions of the lead actresses, because they were both working as porn actresses.

Then the film itself, Nadine (Karen Bach) and Manu (Raffaëlla Anderson) are two young women who have a hopeless existence in a gray suburb of a big city.

For both, their lives take a dramatic turn at the same time, but separately from each other. Manu is raped and Nadine’s only friend is murdered. When the two women accidentally bump into each other, they both have already committed their first murder. They decide to move on together and this is the beginning of one big explosion of sex, drugs and violence. They take revenge on everything and everyone and especially men have to pay for it, in the first place they are the instigators of all the evil that has been done to them.

The film was shot with a hand-held camera and that gives the viewer the feeling that you are on top of the events, the shots are raw and pure and because you see everything, absolutely everything during the sex scenes, the film comes very close. realistic about.

The soundtrack of the film is very good, mainly French underground music that fits perfectly with the brutal in-your-face scenes of ‘Baise Moi’.

The scene in which they both commit their first murder is beautiful, there is constant switching between Nadine and Manu and the cheerful music in the background gives the whole a surreal touch.

The acting can be called good, Bach and Anderson are of course not purebred actresses, but they come across quite convincingly, they portray two fatalistic, merciless women in a good way.

At the time of the film, Bach and Anderson were both working in the porn industry, Raffaëlla Anderson seems to have stopped doing this now and is now trying as a serious actress. Karen Bach didn’t end well, after ‘Baise Moi’ she played in two more porn movies and did in real life what she can’t do at the end in the movie, she committed suicide, on January 28, 2005, only 32 years old old.

‘Baise Moi’ shocks and intrigues, it is a nihilistic road movie, actually a kind of French version of ‘Thelma & Louise’, but different.