Rape Me (2000)

Rape Me - Baise-Moi (2000)

Rape Me movie storyline. Manu (Raffaela Anderson) shoots a man with his own gun and runs off with his money. Later that night, she makes the acquaintance of Nadine (Karen Bach), a woman whose clean-cut appearance belies the fact that she has recently strangled her overbearing roommate. Somewhat unsurprisingly, given their mutual taste for homicide, the two women quickly become kindred spirits and decide to spend some wacky time together until “the 13th,”

when Nadine has to keep an appointment. Lots of sex, violence, and dead men follow, as do the police, who are breathing down the women’s necks like an overly persistent bad date. Baise-Moi was a hit in France, where it endured a ratings controversy due to its extremely graphic content. All of the sex acts in the film were performed by its actors, most of whom had extensive experience in the adult entertainment industry.

Baise-moi is a 2000 French crime thriller film with elements of a rape and revenge film written and directed by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi and starring Karen Lancaume and Raffaëla Anderson. It is based on the novel by Despentes, first published in 1993. The film received intense media coverage because of its graphic mix of violence and explicit sex scenes. Consequently, it is sometimes considered an example of the “New French Extremity.”

Rape Me - Baise-Moi (2000)

As a French noun, un baiser means “a kiss,” but as a verb, baiser means “to fuck,” so Baise-moi means simply “Fuck me.” In some markets the film has been screened as “Rape me,” but the French for “rape me” is emphatically not “baise-moi,” but rather “viole-moi,” and so in a 2002 interview Rape Me was rejected by the directors.

In 2000, The Film Censorship Board of Malaysia banned the film outright because of “very high-impact violence and sexual content throughout.” Later that same year, the film was banned in Singapore owing to “depictions of sexual violence [that] may cause controversy.” In Australia, the film was allowed to be shown at cinemas with an R18+ (adults only) rating.

Then in 2002, the film was pulled from cinemas and television and after that, banned outright. The film is still banned there because of its “harmful, explicit sexually violent content,” and was re-banned in 2013. However, an edited R18+ version was screened on 23 August 2013 on the World Movies channel of the Australian state broadcaster SBS, as part of the World Movies “Films That Shocked The World” season.

Rape Me - Baise-Moi (2000)

The film, co-directed by Coralie Trinh Thi who had previously worked as a pornographic actress, included several unsimulated sex scenes[6]. The two lead roles were also played by porn actresses[5], while several other porn actors, including Ian Scott as one of the rapists, appeared in supporting roles. Due to this, some sections of the media criticized the film as thinly veiled pornography. Le Monde, for instance, called it a “sick film”.

Time magazine bucked the trend by saying: “Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi’s festival sensation is stark, serious and original. And as one of the amoral avengers, Raffaela Anderson has true star quality – part seraph, all slut.” The co-directors rejected the pornography charge: Trinh Thi said in an interview with the Sunday Times that “This movie is not for masturbation, [thus it] is not porn.” Despentes agreed, saying their film “was not erotic”.

Rape Me - Baise-Moi Movie Poster (2000)

Rape Me (2000)

DirectBaise-Moi

ed by: Virginie Despentes, Coralie Trinh Thi
Starring: Raffaëla Anderson, Karen Lancaume, Céline Beugnot, Adama Niane, Christophe Claudy Landry, Tewfik Saad, Delphine McCarty, Karim Chala, Simon Nahoum, Lisa Marshall
Screenplay by: Virginie Despentes, Coralie Trinh Thi
Cinematography by: Benoît Chamaillard, Julien Pamart
Film Editing by: Aïlo Auguste-Judith, Francine Lemaitre, Véronique Rosa
Costume Design by: Magali Baret, Isabelle Fraysse
Art Direction by: Paul Fayard, Irène Galitzine, Christophe Mureau, Claude Veyset
Music by: Varou Jan
Distributed by: Pan-Européenne Distribution
Release Date: June 26, 2000

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