"Despite some game performances from two lead femmes, this hard-core pic is a half-baked, punk-inflected porn odyssey masquerading as a movie worth seeing and talking about."-Lisa Nesselson, VARIETY
"It alternates between between graphic, explicit sex scenes and murder scenes of brutal cruelty. You recoil from what's on the screen. Later, you ask what the filmmakers had in mind. They are French, and so we know some kind of ideology and rationalization must lurk beneath the blood and semen... BAISE-MOI is more of a bluff. The directors know their film is so extreme that most will be repelled, but some will devise intellectual defenses and interpretations for it, saving them the trouble of making it clear what they want to say."
-Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES
One of recent cinema's most controversial texts, BAISE-MOI is an unapologetic display of graphic violence and explicit sex. The audacity and effrontery of the film has led to violent debates and drastic censorship. It is a film made very much in the punk mindset. Quality is sacrificed for raw emotion. It has upset many for its blurring of art and pornography as well as its association with exploitation. Like the French New Wave before it, BAISE-MOI manages to unite low and high culture forms. Porn and philosophy make an uneasy marriage in the film.
Suggested Secondary Screenings: THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED (Kirby Dick, 2006), THE PORNOGRAPHER (Bertrand Bonello, 2001), DESTRCITED (Various Directors, 2006), and THELMA AND LOUISE (Ridley Scott, 1991)
So for this comment I don't think I will have the same incredibly long geek out response I had of Irreversible. Instead I really don't have much to say other than the fact that Baise Moi is basically a violent porno. Cheap violence too. There was nothing shocking about it, it just looked like really cheap blood that you can buy at party city. In fact, one of the scenes were a person was shot actually didn't have a bullet wound. Besides the violence, there was a lot of sex. I mean a lot. Like literally every five to ten minutes there was some form of sex going on. Now the sex displayed on screen, was how you say, very boring. So not only was the violence cheap, but the on screen sex was cluttered with unattractive people who looked like they were having a really boring time. So as a film, it sucked because there was no technique involved as well as a poor story. As a porn it sucked because it had nasty looking people and horrible sex. Also, why was the stock ripping the girls signature move before she had sex? Those are expensive and she is wasting clothing.
ReplyDeleteI suspect part of the reason Gaspar Noe’s work has been revered in this class is that he’s able to make a film feel “expensive” with his technical prowess, regardless of a relatively low budget. If you removed some of the visual splendor, however, would Noe’s work still retain its power? I think, to an extent, it would. It is in this spirit that I've been trying to separate the “cheap” feel of "Baise-Moi" from the actual content. In more capable hands, I think the story has enough potential to make a decent film (even if a straight-to-dvd affair). But as it stands, it fails in numerous departments, such as story, acting, editing, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe story was comedic in a lot of ways. The premise of two “just murdered” females fortuitously crossing paths at a subway station is absurd. That no one interfered in any of their murders is laughable. How a conspicuous pair of women (one short, one tall; one dark, one light skinned; both sex advertisements) were not identified in hotels—or in their casual saunters through town—raises an eyebrow. When you compound this with the (also comedic) acting and editing, you have the makings of an amateurish looking film. Exacerbating this effect is the inclusion of sex scenes imitative of lazy pornography.
After viewing several minutes of “Thelma and Louise” in class, I was reminded that “Baise-Moi” had potential in its premise. I hadn’t seen any of “Thelma and Louise” before that, and I was captivated by the concept of two female leads emancipating themselves from a foulness they could no longer tolerate. It’s a shame, then, that “Baise-Moi” couldn’t pull the dots closer together.
Baise-Moi. Where do I begin... Well, like with all the other screenings we had this semester, I always walk in with a smile telling myself "Oh, it's class time!" and somehow, that smiles always went away when I remembered, that this is a class about the French, and violence. But really, Baise-Moi took this to another level. Seriously. I had trouble watching it and if I hadn't watched it with Josh and Sarah Siegel, I would've probably turned it off.
ReplyDeleteI have to say though, it was great move to compare this to Thelma and Louise, because yes it's two runaway women but really, Thelma and Louise has so much more behind it in terms of story and technique that only (and this could also be very arguable) their main premises could be related. As a whole, I don't think that Despentes tried to bring the whole "it was a choice" idea into the movie. I think this was an attempt to give reason for a porn to make it into regular theaters. Plus, it had horrendous shots, poor video quality, poor acting and random, uncomfortable and dirty sex.