European Crime Drama

Baise-Moi - 2000, Virginie Despartes & Coralie Trinh Thi

More should be done to warn the public about overrated films in order to save them the time and embarrassment of watching them. If I’d known before hand that ‘Baise-Moi’ is French for ‘Fuck Me’ I’d have known to avoid it. Baise-Moi became famous, or ‘notorious’, when the French censors tried to ban it and prevent its release unless heavily edited. This caused a certain amount of uproar amongst a few Frenchies who must have been fans of the book that the film was based on. ‘How can it be that in modern France, a film is banned just because it shows graphic sex and violence?’ was the argument the protestors put forward, disgusted at the idea of ‘the establishment’ censoring a film that didn’t feature anything that hadn’t been done before. An independent film representing the cutting edge of French cinema, self consciously continuing the spirit of Reservoir Dogs (according to what the author/director said in the special feature I watched on the DVD), and fighting against the American Hollywood Bullshit.

Of course the reason the French censors wanted to ban Baise-Moi is because , as Eric Daniel Pierre Cantona might put it, c’est un sac de merde. I doubt a French cinema censor is going to be bothered about watching hardcore porn in a film, or badly executed bloody violence (due to bad direction rather than the low budget). But if a film consists primarily of sex, violence and sexual violence, and there is no artistic merit to any of it, a censor might understandably feel that it is in no-ones interest to watch it.

It seems to me that everyone involved in the banning of Baise-Moi got it wrong. In trying to best fulfil their role of serving the public interest, the censors brought fame and notoriety to a film that no one should watch (as always happens when a film is banned. When will those censors learn?). Those who spoke out in favour of the film misinterpreted the reason for Baise-Moi’s initial censorship. It wasn’t prudish Puritanism that caused the French film authorities to ban Baise-Moi, it was defence of French cinema as a whole. There are a thousand incredible French films out there which are increasingly finding the international audience they deserve, and Baise-Moi lets the side down. By banning it the censors were doing the world a favour.

Inevitably the censors backed down, and even more inevitably the uncut DVD release appeared with enough quotes on the back from journalists who should know better to dupe the public into making Baise-Moi a home video hit.

The first twenty minutes or so aren’t actually that bad. The film has clearly been made on a shoe string with one camera and some amateur actors (and an amateur director?), but there is a grittiness to the opening scenes that is very promising. The two protagonists are introduced as women permanently down on their luck, victims of the small world they live in. Crime, drugs, rape and prostitution are part of their lives and for a long time they’ve accepted it. But things come to a head for the women individually, and when by chance they meet, it’s time for the main body of the story to begin, dragging the film down with it.

The two initially sympathetic French sluts embark on a road trip that becomes an orgy of sex and violence, more boring the more it tries to shock us. The rest of the film involves the women encountering a series of one dimensional male characters who will either get their cock out or suffer a gory death. That’s no exaggeration; almost every man in the film is either fucked or murdered. Maybe I missed some subtle commentary in this reversal of typical genre roles in such films, but I was too bored to pay close enough attention.

One of the things that I found so off-putting about Baise-Moi was the hardcore porn scenes. Of course I’ve seen loads of porn, but at the risk of revealing too much about myself, I find porn very boring when I’m not watching it ‘in anger’. The first close-up shot of a blow job occurring is a bit unexpected, but from then on it just gets tedious. The difference between sex and porn is that sex is between Person A and Person B, porn takes place between Person A, Person B and Camera Operator C. It’s carried out as a performance, not an act of pleasure. Un-simulated sex is always more shocking (and arousing perhaps) in mainstream cinema than ‘look what we’re doing’ porn. The directors and cast of Baise-Moi were too either too dumb or too keen to shock to notice this. Being unsophisticated is not a cinematic crime, and it can even be an asset to a film, but Baise-Moi takes itself far too seriously to get away with such poor film making decisions. Basically, it’s a bag of shit.




Pusher – 1996, Nicholas Winding Refn

The poster (or at least the UK DVD cover) of Danish crime thriller Pusher is very misleading. At no point does the main character Frank played by Kim Bodnia ‘dual-wield’. In fact there are very few shots fired in the film which is still refreshing a whole fifteen years later. At the time Pusher must have been a revelation; America had Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, the UK had Lock Stock and France had La Haine, then up pops Pusher, grittier and more realistic than them all. One hand held camera used throughout, filmed on location in Copenhagen, no sets from what I could tell, and with an excellent cast throughout, not a single dud between them. It also stars the sexiest Dane going, Mads Mikkleson.





There’s nothing cool about the main guy in Pusher. He’s a slightly inept drug dealer and he’s in a lot of trouble. From the picture on the DVD case and the description on the back; ‘Frank has two days to get loads of money before gangsters come to get him etc’ I was expecting to get something more like a violent version of Run Lola Run. Like Run Lola Run, the events in Pusher are propelled by the activities of an inept drug dealer in debt to some bad men. Unlike Run Lola Run, out main character is still a sympathetic guy despite his obvious failings and all the silly mistakes he makes.

Though the direction and the lead performance Pusher achieves a very believable characterisation; we can believe that this guy would fuck up the way he does. This is a very important part of what makes a film ‘very good’ and it’s often overlooked. Consider John Travolta’s character from Pulp Fiction, Vincent Vega. Half way through the film (I think, it's been a while since I watched it, too long in fact) he goes to take a dump while waiting for Bruce Willis to get home, and leaves his Uzi on the kitchen counter. Bruce comes home while Vic is in the can, picks up the piece and kills the hit man with his own gun when he opens the bathroom door. Ridiculous as the whole situation is, Travolta’s character is well enough defined by this point in the film for this scenario to be acceptable. We can believe that Vic would screw up like this so we’re not annoyed by his death, in fact it seems fitting.

Pusher is the same in this respect, and this is why Pusher is not a bag of shit.