Neil Young's Film Lounge

Neil Young’s Film Lounge – Baise-Moi

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. Theres 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 its 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 21^st century there’s surely no real reason why such images shouldnt be shown to adults who know what they’re in for: a Russ Meyer-Abel Ferrara rewrite of La Vie Revee des Anges.

25^th February, 2002
(seen Cineworld, Milton Keynes, 24^th January 2002)

by Neil Young

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