Look­ing beyond the vio­lence of Baise-moi

The New French Extreme is defined by its roots in art house, exploita­tion and hor­ror. Coined by Art­fo­rum writer James Quandt, the term refers to a series of trans­gres­sive films made by French direc­tors at the turn of the new millennium.

Each release out-shocked the last with fre­quent depic­tions of incest, can­ni­bal­ism, sado­masochism and rape. Beyond the veil are often social and polit­i­cal cri­tiques, the seem­ing objec­tive of which are not to incite change, but mere­ly to snarl at the gen­der and racial injus­tices of con­tem­po­rary French society.

Promi­nent entries to this extreme end of cin­e­ma include Alexan­dre Aja’s High Ten­sion, Claire Denis’ Trou­ble Every Day and Gas­par Noé’s Irre­versible, all of which come with their own unique brand of bru­tal­i­ty. But arguably the most noto­ri­ous of all is Baise-moi, a nihilis­tic exer­cise in redefin­ing the bar­ri­ers between porn and cinema.

Twen­ty years since its ini­tial release – a world in which graph­ic and extreme pornog­ra­phy is just a click away – and still the grit­ty crime thriller does not fail to shock. It should come as no sur­prise that the most con­tentious cut arrives less than ten min­utes into the film, as two char­ac­ters are sub­ject­ed to a gang sex­u­al assault.

Writ­ten and direct­ed by fem­i­nist author and film­mak­er Vir­ginie Despentes, the film is based on her 1994 nov­el of the same name. Both works have become some­what of a cause célèbre in their respec­tive worlds, not least because of the creator’s own encoun­ters as a porno­graph­ic crit­ic and sex work­er. Even before the cam­eras were rolling, Despentes’ adap­ta­tion per­tained to the Gen‑X sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion she so furi­ous­ly embraced, enlist­ing porno­graph­ic actress Coralie Trinh Thi as co-cre­ator and, of the same voca­tion­al ilk, Karen Lan­caume and Raf­faëla Ander­son as our lead­ing anti-heroines.

The film tells the sto­ry of Nadine (Karen Lan­caume) and Manu (Raf­faëla Ander­son), a part-time pros­ti­tute and occa­sion­al adult movie star whose paths cross when they flee their small south­ern town, hav­ing both com­mit­ted the mur­der of their per­son­al oppres­sors. Although the build-up to the killings is brief, it’s enough to devel­op a motive, espe­cial­ly for Manu, who shoots her broth­er due to his vicious accu­sa­tion that she hadn’t respond­ed to being sex­u­al­ly assault­ed in the ​“right” way. Nadine, on the oth­er hand, stran­gles her over­bear­ing house­mate after a heat­ed fight.

Soon enough, the pair find an ally in one anoth­er over their mutu­al love of sex and homi­cide, choos­ing to thrust a mid­dle fin­ger to a soci­ety that had reject­ed them and embark on a tour of death and debauch­ery. Scenes of (unsim­u­lat­ed) sex and (sim­u­lat­ed) vio­lence fol­low, as do the police who are hot on their trail. It’s this road-movie-cum-rape-revenge for­mat that earned Baise-moi the unof­fi­cial tagline: ​‘Thel­ma and Louise get laid’.

At its zenith, Baise-moi sparked out­rage among audi­ences and crit­ics alike. The title alone (trans­lat­ed as ​“Fuck me”) proved com­mer­cial­ly prob­lem­at­ic. As a result of strin­gent cam­paigns and a law­suit from far-right group Pro­mou­voir, Baise-moi was even­tu­al­ly banned in its home coun­try, an unprece­dent­ed move giv­en the French cen­sor­ship board’s rep­u­ta­tion as the most lenient in the world.

Sim­i­lar­ly to a major­i­ty of the New French Extreme par­tic­i­pants, the con­tro­ver­sy of Baise-moi caused a media storm that super­seded the real sig­nif­i­cance of its intent. Away from the tumult, an often over­looked under­tone was (and still is) the ground­break­ing por­tray­al of female friend­ship. Under­neath the angst, Nadine and Manu rep­re­sent the antithe­sis of the tyran­ni­cal fig­ures who had dic­tat­ed their move­ments up until this point. In find­ing each oth­er, they find liberation.

After agree­ing to trav­el to Paris togeth­er, what ensues is a mon­tage that wouldn’t be out of place in a bud­dy com­e­dy: the new com­rades danc­ing in a hotel room in their under­wear, antic­i­pat­ing the fren­zy that’s to come. Not once is their friend­ship pre­sent­ed as cloy­ing or futile, nor is it a ques­tion of unit­ing in the name of vengeance. Instead, through an anar­chis­tic fil­ter, Nadine and Manu’s sol­i­dar­i­ty allows them to find a way to live with their ongo­ing trauma.

Baise-moi cul­mi­nates in a cli­mac­tic scene that strips back the fir­ing of shots and semen and presents view­ers with the ques­tion: can female expe­ri­ences, dom­i­nance and sex­u­al agency sur­vive under patri­ar­chal regimes? It’s sen­ti­ments like these, trag­ic they may be, that pro­vide one of the many aspects of the film that are often dis­missed by critics.

By tak­ing the less sen­sa­tion­al­ist ele­ments into con­sid­er­a­tion, the shock fac­tor of Baise-moi becomes mere­ly a by-prod­uct that chal­lenges the view­er to look beyond the sex and vio­lence. Beneath the sur­face exists an opti­mistic alter­na­tive to the impe­ri­ous expec­ta­tions of women in soci­ety. And by crush­ing this vision right at the last minute, per­haps Despentes is imply­ing the idea is one that, like the film, the world just isn’t quite ready to accept.