Viólame

Maybe it's because I live in Holland and have a very open mind to sex, drugs and well, maybe not to murder but I was not that shocked.

Of course the rape scene was a bit hard and did not leave much to your imagination, but the rest.... Me and my girlfriend were just entertained by the rest of the movie.

I just read some other 20 user comments and I was in fact shocked by those. Prudish americans and british telling you that it is shocking and garbage and so on. A 5.0 average makes also clear that most of the people are still filled with tabboos.

Big erections and mindless sex.... so what? shooting people up there arse? surely I'd prefer that compared to what happens to the guy that rapes marsellus wallace in Pulp Fiction.

Indeed this was a low budget movie and the camerawork was perhaps of poor quality but it suits the pic. As a student indeed a search for reasons and meaning and I find it hihgly irritating that some people complain about things left unexplained. What are you? Can't you think and maybe even guess for yourselves? Does everything have to be explained?

We both liked it and surely I understand this is not a movie for everyone. I think more of it as an experimental piece of work, seek your own reasons for what they are doing, enjoy this wild ride and if you persist in having a monumentuous storyline, oscar performances and so on, and you are not specifically entertained by x rated sex, lots of blood and the socalled 'holes' in this story then....

Just don't watch this movie!!!!

The backside of the DVD or VHS gives plenty of clues that this is a controversial movie and when you have an open mind and like these kind of movies, i recommend it.

We give it a 7.0

I'm not exactly a Francophile. I love the cooking but hate the restaurants. French is one of the great languages of the world, but I find the French attitude to it xenophobic. Yet there is one thing that always stirs my passion. I admire them for it. I wish we had an ounce of it in Britain.

The best known examples of course are the film protests in 1968 – a time when everyone was protesting about everything. But they helped, indirectly, to restore the international prestige of French cinema. When Baise-Moi was banned shortly after release in 2000, there were spontaneous street protests. Now this is a bit different – the film's artistic merits or lack of them are still a matter of debate. But I take my hats off to the French. I would love to see the British protest in the name of cinematic freedom. (The ban was eventually lifted after separate protests signed by Parisian intellectuals.)

As you will already have guessed, the issues around this film are complicated. And they get worse. There is a tendency to react emotively to any highly charged sexual issues. This tendency can maybe blind us somewhat when it comes to analysing more important ones.

This is a film made by women, about women living on the fringes of society. I was once importunate enough to argue with acclaimed filmmaker Gaspar Noé (after a public screening of Irreversible) that his film didn't address the issue of rape as well as Baise Moi. I still believe that, although Irreversible is a landmark film for other reasons entirely. Most films about rape follow male-orientated story lines. They often emphasise the purely physical, violence-aspect (as in Irreversible) or have a strong woman seeking and finding redress (as in The Accused). The reality is that most rape victims are traumatised mentally and emotionally. Physical hurt as a result of violence is no less an issue, but a separate one. Although The Accused looks at some of the metal trauma, it ultimately plays out as a success story. Few rape victims take on such a masculinised determination to succeed against the odds. Odds which are still stacked against the victim.

What I liked about Baise-Moi is that it eschews the woman-survivor scenario for a more realistic picture of lasting psychological damage. Films that show the real horror of rape may discourage it more than ones that show women 'getting over it.' One of the victims of rape in Baise-Moi actually 'lets' her assailants get on with it, commenting to her friend afterwards that at least they didn't wind up dead. The rape (and the violence) of Baise-Moi convinced me that she probably hedged her bets wisely. Her lack of struggle didn't, in my mind, make her any the less a victim. And neither did the unpleasant fact that she was a part-time prostitute make her any more 'deserving.' This is something that it is not easy to live with. As a society, we have moved past the point where a girl in a short skirt acting flirtatiously (The Accused) is 'asking for it' or 'deserving of rape.' But where is our cut-off point? The marginals in society are often seen as dispensable. No-one wants to acknowledge them – least of all mainstream filmmakers. Yet they can be just as much victims.

Another thing I like about Baise-Moi is that the two girls that form a bond and go on a road trip are fully developed as characters. Like most young women, they enjoy having a good time and going after boys. But they have been mentally scarred. One of them has been brutally gang-raped and the other has watched her only friend being killed. They are not 'good girls gone bad'. They are fairly 'bad' already. But they are still victims. Beneath their bravado their mental deterioration is apparent. In Black Snake Moan, the horrific effects of a redneck woman's history of sexual abuse and rape are given some time through Christina Ricci's great acting, but the plot is driven by male characters towards a stupid and not very believable conclusion. In Baise-Moi, it is the trauma that the women went through that drives the plot. (Sadly one of the main actresses, Karen Bach committed suicide in 2005.) The film is arguably weakened by a change of style. The initial scenes are very realistic, including the horrific rape. But then the main protagonists go on a killing spree reminiscent of Natural Born Killers on trash aesthetic. Perhaps this is appropriate – they live in la-la land as long as they can. But it will confuse some viewers.

"To reclaim women's rights over their true sexuality, to seize it back from the male gaze. It's always men who have a problem with a woman's sex: that's their problem, not ours." A noble aim by the filmmakers. But will feminists baulk when they realise that one of the directors and two of the stars have previously worked in hard-core pornography? "There's no logical reason why sex scenes should only be in porn," says Trinh Thi. Indeed, Hollywood agrees. I am sure there are convincing psychological arguments, but realistic sex still upsets many audiences (personally I have more of a problem with overly-realistic violence).

This analysis has outstayed its welcome. I have laboured the good points of the film and rated it accordingly. On a technical level, the idea of using only natural lighting also works well. But apart from its stand against censorship and the way it deals with rape, the film is lacking in many respects. It was made on a very small budget and it shows. The acting is acceptable but not much is demanded from actors in terms of interiorisation and so on. There's a good soundtrack. But the main reason to see the film may probably be to argue over the issues it raises.

Don't be swayed by all the negative comments, Baise Moi is a worthwhile film. Yes the sex is explicit, and much of the violence simply pointless, but underneath it all remains a compelling vision of two people on a road trip to hell. Both leads may come from porn, but their acting skills are totally credible. One of the most nihilistic movies ever made.

I first saw a poster advertising this film on a street in Helsinki, Finland in June of 2000. What caught my attention was the proud proclamation advising all readers that the movie, although itself French, had been "Banned in France". Upon returning home to New York, I discovered that one of the "Art House" movie theaters in the City was screening the film, and so (with my Finnish fiancee) decided to see what all the fuss was about. Boy, did we ever.

From the comments read here, and the reviews I knew the movie was violent and sexually explicit. Not necessarily offended by either of these two conditions, I went with an open mind to see what had perturbed the sensibilities of our Gallic cousins. Presumably, as anyone who is reading this will know, the story involves two women who embark on a crime and murder spree in France (the movie has English subtitles). The resemblance to "Thelma and Louise" however, ends with that; the sex is unusually graphic (and in copious supply) as is the violence (a lot of stomping to death, and a lot of blood and other organic matter splattering after bullet impact).

On an intellectual level, one could make the case that the film's very essence is the relationship of sex and violence (as manifested by the only sex these women know: one is a small-time prostitute, and the other has earned money from time to time by performing in pornographic films. When they, during their descent into crime and murder, have the upper hand over their sexual situations, they react only with the same violence and brutality that they themselves know and understand. It is important to note, however, that the victims of their rampage are not only creepy men interested in creepy sex, (of which there are several)but innocent passersby, a woman at an ATM, for example, as well.

I myself do not really understand why the repeated "porn-movie" shots were all that necessary, (except to depict the physical contact as cruel, unpassionate and debased) and the unrelenting gore did get rather tedious after the first few violent spasms.

It is a coarse and crude movie, but in fairness, it is dealing with coarse and crude people and equally unpleasant circumstances. From one point of view, the lives of the French underclasses is explored, and it's pretty grim; a travelogue for France it definitely is not- perhaps that's why the French banned it.

I've read a lot of the comments for this movie and think that many of you have missed the point. The directors claim this to be a movie about friendship - and that the bonds of that relationship have nothing to do with the circumstances from which they are born. I'm somewhat sceptical about that. If you just wanted to make a movie about friendship, it could be about nuns. Or puppies. Or just about anything. But Baise-moi (which translates as Shag Me, not F**k Me) serves to highlight very clearly the moral hypocrisy that surrounds cinema, and has done ever since the days of the Hayes Code. The irony here lies in the fact that it is the explicit sex that caused the film to be banned in so many territories. No one has a problem with the violence. Sure, the violence might be simulated, and the sex isn't - but they both occupy the same space on the screen. And while it's legal to have sex in the privacy of your home, the violence depicted could never be legal. After all, you can see worse violence in Freddy vs. Jason, and more explicit sex on any porn video you might choose, so what is it about the combination that riles people so? I'll concede that the film is flawed, and demonstrates the debutant directors lack of experience, but for the challenge it sets to our jaded set of morals in the west, it should be applauded.