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Baise-moi Reviews

2000
1 hr 13 mins
Drama, Suspense
NR

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Yanked from distribution and slapped with a porn rating in Paris, Baise-Moi gained notoriety by fusing the combination of guns and real sex. The film focuses on women who have been thoroughly alienated, abused, and humiliated by mainstream society: Nadine (Karen Lancaumeone), a streetwise vagabond who found her only friend shot dead, and Manu (Raffaëla Anderson), who endured a violent rape. A chance meeting leads the two to hit the road à la Thelma and Louise and find a voice for their bottomless rage by gleefully killing any and all who might cross their path, while also nurturing their sexuality with long benders of animalistic coupling. After the outlaws dispatch with the entire clientele of a swingers' club, the authorities start to close in. This film was screened at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival.

Reviewed By: Jonathan Crow

Billed as Thelma and Louise meets Romance, Baise-Moi feels more like Natural Born Killers meets Deep Throat, only less subtle. What starts as an anarchist spree of sex and violence evolves into a mean-spirited rant, alternately titillating and abusing the audience with no discernable political agenda. While touted as a feminist invective against male and bourgeois domination, the lurid manner in which the actresses are shot and the sex acts depicted seem more in keeping with male fantasy than female empowerment. The film's ballyhooed nihilism lacks the poetry or imagination of the works by Francois Ozon, or even John Waters. Shot on video, the film has the sort of cheap feel of public access television.