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BAISE-MOI
7/10
France
2001 : Virginie Despentes & Coralie Trinh Thi : 89 mins
Raffaela
Anderson and Karen Bach burn up the screen as Manu and Nadine, two young
women so brutalised by the horrors of modern urban France that they react
by going on a kill-crazy, f*ck-crazy rampage around the country. The parts
that are supposed to look like cheap porn movies look like cheap porn
movies. The parts that are supposed to look like violent exploitation
movies look like violent exploitation movies. The other sections are rougher-edged
and looser, but show a visual flair and an awareness of how to use music
– and actors – that strongly suggests the directors know exactly what
they’re doing, even if their attempts to shock us with sex and bloodshed
become more and more predictable. There’s no such thing as ‘going too
far’ for either the pair of women on screen (both recruited from porn
movies), or the pair of women behind the camera – it’s typical of Despentes
(who wrote the source novel) and Trinh Thi that they prefer to translate
the title as ‘Rape Me’ rather than the more literal ‘Fuck Me’, when a
dictionary would probably come up with the even tamer ‘Kiss Me’. Unsimulated
penetration and fellatio scenes will inevitably run into trouble with
censors wherever the film is shown, but in the 21st century
there’s surely no real reason why such images shouldn’t be shown
to adults who know what they’re in for: a Russ Meyer-Abel Ferrara rewrite
of La Vie Revee des Anges.
25th
February, 2002
(seen
Cineworld, Milton Keynes, 24th January 2002)
by Neil
Young
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