Ferdinand presents … Fuck me: Spotlight on Baise Moi

Trailer:

Dance scene:

 

“Makes Thelma and Louise look like a Merchant-Ivory film”

“Makes Thelma and Louise look like a lighthearted Disney movie”

“Thelma and Louise get laid”

“Thelma and Louise with actual penetration”

“Thelma and Louise with cum shots”

“Thelma and Louise without Hollywood sentiment”

“The French Thelma and Louise”

 

“All you need to make a movie is a girl and a gun.” —Jean-Luc Godard

 

Film synopsis, background and basic analysis:

The uncompromising film adaptation of Virginie Despentes’ debut novel “Baise Moi” stars Karen Bach as Nadine and Raffaela Anderson as Manu. Two friends who go on a killing spree after one of them is gang raped. What is interesting is that like the characters, the actresses themselves also happen to be involved in sex work, specifically porn. The two directors of the film: Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinch Thi also have a background in sex work and porn respectively. Furthermore three of these women at the helm of the film have also been gang raped. Together these women have created an unflinching, thrilling and stylish revenge porn film that was initially banned in France and remains banned in Australia today.

“Baise Moi” which translates as “Fuck me” has an elaborate history of sensorship in many countries and becauce of this exists in a few formats. The definite version being the UK 2013 uncut DVD release by Arrow. The film despite its serious subject matter does have a cartoonish punk sensibility. Early in the film Nadine a tall brunette is shown masturbating to porn in a small living room when she is rudely interrupted by her obnoxious female flatmate who she later strangles to death out of exasperation.

“Are you still watching that smut?” the flat mate sniggers.

“I didn’t expect you,” Nadine replies unembarrassed, “Go to the kitchen, I’m tired of beating off in my bedroom.”

According to The Paris Review: “the novel that the film is based on is trashy, crude and incredibly violent. It is very much a book of the early 90’s and the nascent grunge movement.” Virginie Despentes has said that Kathy Acker was a big influence aswell as the controversial feminist theorist Camille Paglia.

What is important aswell as radical about “Baise moi” is that the character Manu, a rape victim on the run for killing her brutish brother, is not defined and crippled by her rape. She is defiant.
“I dont give a shit about their scummy dicks” she informs her distraught friend who was brutally beaten when gang raped alongside Manu in an abandoned warehouse.

“How could you let them do that?” the friend cries, admonishing Manu for not putting up a fight or giving a terrorised response.

“I leave nothing precious in my cunt for those jerks.” She explains, having seemingly endured previous violation at the hands of men. Later in the film Manu and Nadine are shown enjoying sex with two studs. The sex in the film is unsimulated and depicts different types of experiences of getting penetrated.

With “Baise moi” Virginie Despentes has made a film that vividly depicts women who endure rape, rataliate violently and are still able enjoy sex. But for the censors this depiction of brutal rape, violence and unsimulated sex in cinema prooved too radical.

 

X Rating in France and ban in other countries

Originally released in cinemas in France under an age restriction of 16, it caused outrage particularly from right wing religious groups and the Nation Republican Movement who litigated against the classification decision. The Council of State acted unusually fast by removing the film from the circuit and reclassified it with an X rating. Under this classification any cinema showing the film would be fined and the film could only be sold in porn shops. The Council in their X rating statement deemed the film pornoghachic and said that it had the potential to excite violence in viewers.

France is a country who prides itself on it’s liberal constitution. “Baise moi” had been the first film in 28 years to be banned in France and the ban received a lot of media coverage. Suppression of the country’s highly valued freedom of expression in art came into question. France minister for Culture, Catherine Tasca, finally ended the debate by re-introducing an 18 certificate without the X classification, allowing the film to be re-released in mainstream theatres in France.

The film release followed a similar pattern in Australia with an initial 16 rating and backlash from the conservative right and politicians leading to the film being pulled from the circuit. The banning of the film was permanent and the ban remains in place in Australia today along with other films like Kenpark and the uncut version of Pink Flamingos.

In New Zealand the film was screened in cinemas in its uncensored form but politicians and right wing groups in N.Z also had it in for “ Baise moi” and an injuction filed by the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards led to its ban on Home Video.

In Singapore and Malaysia the film was banned on release. Screenings in cinemas were uncensored in Germany, Finland and Bulgaria and met without controversy. In America it was released without classification and screened at art house cinemas. In Hong Kong and the U.K a censored version of the film was shown in cinemas. In Canada, Onttario deemed the film too pornographic to be screened in cinemas. In Quebec the film saw moderate success on the circuit in its uncensored format but one movie goer had a violent reaction during a screening and broke into the projection booth and stole the print, ending the screening.

Critics also responded hostilely to the film apart from Time magazine who listed it in their top 10 films for 2000. They remarked “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.”

 

Protest of film ban in Paris / Virginie Despentes on early 90’s milieu:

 

Accusations of pornography, sencorship statement and X-rated status of the film:

 

Actresses talk about working in porn and starring in the film:

 

Australian ban:

 

New Zealand ban:

 

Watching the censored version:

I had a suspicion when finally watching the dvd copy of “Baise Moi” I recently purchased through a private dvd seller here in South Africa that my copy had been censored. It doesn’t say anywhere on the dvd that scenes have been cut. Despite having seen it two decades ago on VHS from my local video store – I remember the scenes in question were longer, more vivid and in the case of the rape scene,unbearable. I have mixed feelings about the sencored and shortened rape scene. A part of me is relieved that the scene with it’s unsimulated penetration has been shortened. The original rape scene as I remember it was drawn out, the anguished bellowing of one of the victims being mercilessly beaten and raped in a godforsaken warehouse – every second of it was pure terror.

It was while compiling clips for this post that I came across a reviewer comparing his two UK copies of the film: the 2003 release I have and the more recent 2013 uncensored Arrow release – that my suspicions were confirmed: my copy had been censored. I feel like censored versions of films should come with notifications : “the film you’re about to watch has been censored.” I had the same experience with Velvet Goldmine years after seeing it in the cinema here. Watching it with a friend on Home Video I was amazed that the tame gay “sex” scenes or hints at gay sex were removed. It’s a specific feeling watching something and having the suspicion that it has been censored with no warning. Along with the idea of people unknowingly watching a film that has been censored – it is like being duped.

My opinion after having watched the censored version of “Baise moi” is that the pacing of the film is somewhat off. The parts don’t fit as well especially towards the end of the film where the gruesome gunfire scene has been tampered with. The overall feeling is that the film ends too soon and with decidedly less of a bang. The definite version of the film would then have to be the 2013 UK Arrow DVD release with the horrid rape scene intact.

“The character of the loser in the stakes of femininity doesn’t just appeal to me, she’s essential to me.” – Virginie Despentes

 

Behind the scenes:

 

The novel

“Baise-Moi is one of the most controversial French novels of recent years, a punk fantasy that takes female rage to its outer limits. Now the basis for a hit underground film that was banned in France, Baise-Moi is a searing story of two women on a rampage that is part Thelma and Louise, part Viking conquest.

Manu and Nadine have had all they can take. Manu has been brutally raped, and determines it’s not worth leaving anything precious lying vulnerable–including her very self. She teams up with Nadine, a nihilist and prostitute who watches pornography incessantly, and they enact their own version of les vols et les viols (rape and pillage)–they lure men sexually, use them up, then rob and kill them. Drawing from the spiky cadences of the Sex Pistols and the murderous eroticism of Georges Bataille or Dennis Cooper, Baise-Moi is a shocking, accomplished, and truly unforgettable novel.” — Grove Atlantic, who published the english edition translated from French by Bruce Benderson:

 

Novel excerpt from Groveatlantic.com

Chapter I

Nadine’s sitting in front of the TV, wearing a suit, pushing fast forward to get past the credits. The VCR’s an old model, without a remote.

On-screen is a fat blonde, trussed to a wheel, her head at the bottom. Close-up on her congested face: sweat pouring under the foundation makeup. There’s a guy in glasses energetically masturbating her with a whip handle. He calls her a fat, dirty pig and she chortles.

All the actors in the film look like storekeepers from the neighborhood. It has the unsettling appeal of a certain kind of German cinema.

Offscreen, a woman’s voice bellows: “And now, bitch, piss your brains out.” Urine gushes out like a show of holiday fireworks. The voice offscreen says the man can take advantage of it, and he pounces eagerly on the stream. He throws the camera a few frantic glances, getting totally into the piss and exposing himself spiritedly.

Next scene, the same girl is on all fours carefully spreading the white cheeks of her fat ass.

A guy who looks like the first one is silently pumping her.

The blonde has the affected airs of a young leading lady. She licks her lips with relish, wrinkles her nose and makes a big deal out of panting. At the top of her thighs, the cellulite moves in bundles. There’s a little drool on her chin, and it’s easy to see the pimples under her makeup. Her old, flabby body tries to project “young girl.”

By moving her ass as convincingly as she can, she even manages to divert attention from her belly, her stretch marks and that homely mug of hers. A tour de force. Nadine lights a butt without moving her eyes from the screen. Not bad at all.

The scene changes; now it’s a black girl packed into a formfitting red leather dress, walking into the stairwell of a building. She’s blocked by a hooded guy who promptly handcuffs her to the banister. Then he grabs her by the hair and forces her to suck him.

The door to the apartment slams, Nadine grumbles something about “that idiot who doesn’t have to come home to eat,” just as the guy in the film says, “You’ll see, you’ll end up loving my cock, they all end up loving it.”

Before she’s even taken off her jacket, Séverine yells, “Still watching that junk.”

Without turning around, Nadine answers, “You’re here just in time, the beginning would’ve turned you off, but even you would like this black girl.”

“Turn that off right away, you know very well it disgusts me.”
“Besides, handcuffs really do the trick, I love them.”

“Turn that TV off. Now.”

It’s the same problem as insects developing a tolerance to insecticide: you’ve got to find new ways to liquidate them.

The first time that S’verine found a porno cassette left out on the living room table, she was so shocked she couldn’t complain. But she’s hardened a lot since then, and it keeps taking more and more to get the best of her.

As far as Nadine’s concerned, this is actually therapy she’s offering. She’s loosening up that tight ass of Séverine’s, bit by bit.

Meanwhile, the black girl really has developed a taste for the guy’s dick. She swallows it hungrily and shows a lot of tongue. He ends up coming on her face, and she begs him to take her from behind.

Séverine plops down next to Nadine, scrupulously avoiding looking at the screen, and gets aggravatingly shrill: “You’re really sick and you’ll end up making me sick.”

Nadine asks, “Would you mind going into the kitchen? I’d rather masturbate in front of the TV, it’s really a drag always having to do it in my room. “Course, you can stay if you want.”

The other girl freezes. She’s trying to understand what’s happening and figure out how to answer. Not easy for her.

Satisfied with having disconcerted her, Nadine turns off the VCR. “I was joking.”

Visibly relieved, the other sulks unconvincingly, then starts talking. She reels off some of the annoyances of her workday as she goes to the bathroom to check her face. She monitors her body like a drill sergeant, determined to keep every hair and every inch in line with current standards, whatever the cost. She yaps, “And nobody called me?”

She holds on to the thought that the guy who laid her last week is going to show up. But this guy didn’t seem stupid, and fat chance that he will.

S’verine asks the same question every day. And every day, she comes out with a stream of irate complaints: “I never would have believed he was like that. We really talked a lot to each other. I just don’t get why he’s not calling back. It’s disgusting the way he used me.”

Used her. As if her cunt were too high-class to get any good out of a prick.

Where sex is concerned, she comes up with a mind-boggling wealth of such stupidities, a complicated treatise full of contradictions she never admits. Right now she just keeps vehemently repeating that she’s “not that kind of girl.” For her, the generic “that kind of girl” sums up the worst part of human beings. Somebody should reassure her: she isn’t “that kind of girl”; she’s idiotic, unbelievably pretentious, brazenly narcissistic and nauseatingly banal no matter what she says. There sure is nothing easy about her.

It’s no surprise she rarely gets laid, despite the fact of how much good it would do her.

Nadine gives her a sideways look, resigns herself to playing confidante. She suggests, ‘draw up a contract for the next time. The guy has to promise to keep you company the day after or call you during the week. If he doesn’t sign, don’t spread for him.”

Séverine needs a little time to understand whether she should take this as an attack, a joke or good advice. Finally, she opts for a tiny, delicate laugh. It’s a show of subtlety that ends up sounding in bad taste. Then relentlessly she goes on: “What I don’t understand is that it wasn’t the kind of guy who’d jump on just any girl, otherwise I wouldn’t have wanted to from the very first night.

Something really happened between us. In fact, I think I scared him, believe me: guys are always afraid of girls with strong personalities.”

She loves tackling the theme of her ‘strong personality.” Just as she always brings up her sparkling intelligence or how cultured she is. It’s one of the mysteries of the mind, God alone knows how she got it into her head.

It’s true that she does put some effort into the way she talks. She laces it with hip words okayed by the crowd she hangs out with. She works up a list of cultural references for herself, choosing them as if they were fashion accessories: in line with the times and good at making her look like her peers.

In fact, she pays attention to her personality as you would to your bikini waxing, since she’s aware that you have to play all your cards to seduce a man. Her ultimate goal is to become somebody’s wife, and with all the trouble she goes through, she’s expecting to hook a good one. Masculine intuition tells guys to keep their distance from this bonsai. But sooner or later she’ll get one of them and fill his head with her crap on a daily basis.

Nadine stretches, sympathizing with the poor bloke who finally gets taken in by it. She gets up for a beer. Séverine follows her to the kitchen without stopping talking. She’s finished with that boor who won’t call, but she’ll start on it again tomorrow. Now she dives enthusiastically into the latest malicious gossip.

Leaning against the fridge, Nadine watches her eat her salad.

They moved in together for purely practical reasons. Little by little, their living together became pathological, but neither has the means to live alone. In any case, Nadine can’t collect unemployment when she doesn’t have a pay stub. And S’verine doesn’t mind her as much as she pretends. Fundamentally, she’s a masochist and gets a certain pleasure out of rough treatment. She’s perverse, but not the user-friendly version.

Nadine finishes her beer, looks in the ashtray for a serviceable butt because she can’t be bothered going down to the tobacco shop. She finds a half-smoked joint. It’s more than enough to get stoned, and the discovery puts her in good humor.

She patiently waits for S’verine to go back to work, politely wishes her a good day. Then she rummages through S’verine’s room because she knows she’s stashed some whiskey there. She fills a large glass with it and sits down in front of the TV.

She lights the roach, concentrates on holding in the smoke as long as she can. She pushes the volume of the stereo all the way up and starts the VCR without sound.

She can feel the space between her and the world suddenly mellowing out, nothing worries her, everything is fun. Joyfully she recognizes the symptoms of being really high.

She slides down to the bottom of the chair, gets out of her pants and lets her palm play under the material of her panties. She watches her hand moving between her thighs in regular circles, speeds up the movement and tenses her hips.

She raises her eyes to the screen again, to the girl bent over the banister of the staircase, shaking her head from right to left as her undulating ass swallows the guy’s penis

 

Liberation interview
Translated from French with google

Three women take possession of their sex.
Catherine Breillat in Dialogue with the two directors: Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi. Article by François Armanet and Béatrice Vallaeys published June 13, 2000

“Baise-moi” by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi, screened in Cannes as part of the Film Market, arrives on French screens on June 28, while “A Real Young Girl,”the first production of Catherine Breillat, is in theaters for a week, after 25 years of purgatory. Two women’s films adapted from two novels which bring back the old debate of pornography in cinema.

For “Baise-moi” the bloody run of two killers played by porn professionals, the censorship commission proposed on June 6 a ban for those under 16 (not rated X) and we are awaiting the green light from the ministry of Culture.

Last year, Romance had earned Catherine Breillat the same route for scenes deemed also pornographic. The sex explicitly shown on screen by the filmmakers is part of a persistent movement of auteur cinema. Films that have not been met without indignant reactions. Because if the spectacle of violence has no more limits, sexual images, as soon as they leave the commercial framework of the porn industry, are today the last place of scandal.

Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi directed Baise-moi. From “A Real Young Girl” twenty-five years ago, to Romance, Catherine Breillat hit the headlines. Two generations, three women who like to disturb. Here is their discussion.

 

Pornography

Catherine Breillat: A film is pornographic if it is conceived as an object of concupiscence. In 1975, when the classification of X appeared (particularly repressive at the time), “A Real Young Girl” was simply banned for children under 18. The censorship commission had not even imposed a warning on the public, while Emmanuelle had been X rated because her sole purpose was to eroticize fantasies. This is not the case with the sex scenes in Virginie Despentes’ film. One does not feel sexual urges while watching Baise-moi, while the images are pornographic, proof that there is confusion between image and illusion.

Virginie Despentes: The films of the 70s have a lightness that we have completely lost.
CB: It was the Warholian era, the sexuality was chic, intellectual, jet-set.
VD: Four years ago, when we started casting for Fuck Me, I was surprised to see girls worrying about whether they should really suck. I understood that what bothered them was not so much to do it as to assume that they had done it. Any girl can do it, while a guy can’t get hard on a set. He wonders if his cock will be big enough to show off, if it will work.
CB: For “Romance” I had the same problem. I had to take Rocco Siffredi, because all the non-porn actors turned down the role.
VD: We deliberately chose porn actors when we saw the two actresses Karen Bach and Rafaella Anderson in Exhibition 99 (by John B. Root). Porn actresses fascinate me. They are the freed, those who transgress. In my imagination, not in reality.

CB: Some women have found “Romance” demeaning to women. It’s old feminism. Françoise Giroud and Agnès Varda, for example, lashed out against me. They defend abortion, but not the type of thinking that has been engendered in women and forms part of their gender identity. According to these feminists, female sexuality is taboo and shameful. Talking about it makes them dirty. These are the same arguments as those of the fundamentalists. This is what I call the Stockholm syndrome of women: hostages of men, they end up adopting their position vis-à-vis female sexuality. But things are changing. Women thought I was a prostitute, that I hated men; today, they are very happy that a woman can make these types of films.
VD: Do we make women happy? There is surely an element of exorcism. What interested me in filming “Baise moi” was to show that sex scenes don’t doom girls to turn all guys on. They fuck. Period. They are individuals.
Coralie Trinh Thi: Their sexuality is their integrity.

CB: “Romance” was an incredible pain before it’s creation, until the moment of the transgression, of the rediscovered innocence. Before asking the actors to take action, I accumulated sleepless nights. Freud says that taking action does not release fantasies. Me, I believe that it frees alienations. In life, you just keep having sex that isn’t that complicated or sordid and even when it is, there is a beauty of the sordid.
CTT: The woman is cut in two: the head on one side, the ass on the other. This idea in “Romance” overwhelmed me. It is up to the woman to prove to the men and to herself that she can remain whole and that it does not defile her.
VD: When you test the actors, you realize that they know their face very well, not their body.
CB: They are more puritanical than the women, who are cut in half but find a certain delight in reconstituting themselves. The men remain in a prudishness which mutilates them.
CTT: It’s not that simple. The phallus is not ashamed, it is also a symbol of power.

 

Eroticism

CB: Eroticism is the total humiliation of women. The idea that it is acceptable, because it is pretty. Pornography is ugly, I prefer ugly.
CTT: Why is it so crucial that we need a border?
CB: The aesthetic codes must be changed. We can begin to love and find beautiful the flowing, the oozing. Moral disgust is aesthetic. You have to face the fact that the organic scares you. The sex of women is like the black hole of the universe. The proof: fundamentalist Islamists disembowel after having raped.
VD: I don’t know what’s on the mind of men, but the fear is there. We really carry their burden. Rebalancing must be possible. There are starting to be male prostitutes for girls. When we go to pay, we will understand better what we want.
CTT: All men are afraid of women. They are not educated to control their desires, while the woman is more used to controlling hers. Finally, by dint of restraining them, she did not lose everything.

 

Revolt

CB: My films are not provocation, but revolt. That of having undergone an education which made me extremely puritanical. In life, I conform to all inhibitions, all guilt.
VD: I feel the same anger, but I trust that this will change. Hatred of man? It’s not real: they don’t necessarily blame us. It’s just what women think of it.
CB: But it is the men who founded this morality, these oppressions, these Churches.
VD: Yes, but we put a lot of ours into it. We women.
CB: The straitjacket of laws has placed women in a state of ignorance, doomed them to be the womb destined to procreate. They didn’t have a conscience, we can’t blame them. You believe that Afghan women will not soon be persuaded that they are inferior to men. This is the subject of “A Real Young Girl” one begins to fall prey to man as soon as it appears physically that one becomes a woman.
VD: They will have to get stronger. I feel like I have a mission to fulfill, I was going to say a mission of revenge, but that’s not quite it. We have to blow things up. To give back dignity, to humanity.
CTT: The previous generation has a lot more guilt and shame about their sexuality. But it’s getting better.

 

The word and the image

VD: I was very surprised that so many people wanted to read my book. I wrote it for the punks, there were some, but not that many. In fact, I didn’t really appreciate the reaction of readers who mistook me for their new girlfriend.
CB: The image is more unacceptable than the words because we have no choice to walk away.
VD: It all depends on the reader and the viewer. We can go further in literature, because the book belongs to the bourgeois class, while the cinema is accessible to all: fear is there. I am supposed to take precautions with the image, while making people completely ignorant, leaving them in misery.
CB: The film is hypnotic. People are caught up, forced to enter into the discomfort in which they are put. I love to lose the normative benchmarks of good and evil, to shatter moral grids. Censorship creates entirely what it claims to protect us from.

CB: Sexuality is the greatest violence today. If we show a woman who kills, she is not accused of obscenity. If we show her having sex, she’s a prostitute. Everything becomes obscene in a woman from the moment a law decides it. If there is a law to hide hair, hair becomes obscene.
VD: In “Baise moi” we did not set limits. The heroines belong to a specific social background, a good working class and a white middle-class girl. From there, everything is a balance of power. And since they are women, it adds up. They feel anger against all that is dominant, which crushes, suffocates. The man and his sex, but also his economic weight.
CTT: Heroines don’t kill everyone they fuck. They only kill everyone at the end, in the orgy box.
VD: It made me very happy to kill everyone in there. Orgy clubs are bourgeois, sad, it’s death. I like the idea, to go somewhere to have sex with everyone. But there, it is the men who decide. This is not a place of sex and delirium.

VD: In the movie, we wanted to show creepy sex, but also gay sex. It is not so much a manifesto as the story of a slippage.
CB: It is a war that is declared on men. When a woman wants to say what she is, she must claim it very violently.
VD: I am happy to put people off. There is a pleasure to piss them off. It makes for discussion.
CB: People have to understand that cinema is fiction. Murderous desires, everyone has them. It’s very good to channel, to tame these impulses, especially when you are a teenager, alone with your impulses. This fiction avoids the passage to the act. The prohibition of violence incites violence.

 

Homosexuality

CB: I recognize myself very well in homosexual cinema and homosexuals recognize themselves in my cinema. We describe the reality of love and physical desire beyond the sentimental, moralistic and religious codes that have been put into our heads.
VD: Homosexuals feel wrong, me too.
CB: Fassbinder was the only one to show the brutal, physical and silent side of these meetings. We know we’re going to sleep together. What other filmmaker was able to film this? There always had to be silly foreplay. The immediate desire, gay filmmakers know how to film it.

 

Family

VD: I try not to think about my parents, because I know I hurt them, but the money I earn redeems me in their eyes.
CB: I don’t care what anyone says. The only problem, my children. I have a 27-year-old daughter, a 20-year-old son and an 8-year-old son. They can’t stand my films because, like all children, they are normative.
VD: Even at 27 and 20?
CB: It’s worse, because there is the girlfriend, what will she think of my mother?

 

Broadly meet Virginie Despentes:

“I find it strange that today, when so many people walk around with tiny computers in their pockets-cameras, phones, personal organizers, iPods-there exists no object at all to slip into your pussy when you go out for a stroll that will rip up the cock of any fucker who sticks it in there. Perhaps it isn’t desirable to make female genitalia inaccessible by force. A woman must remain open, and fearful. Otherwise, how would masculinity define itself?” From King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes

 

R.I.P Karen Lancaume:

A tale of Suicide, sex and violence:
https://lostgirls.home.blog/tag/virginie-despentes/

Plagued by demons of the past and by bad relationships with men, Karen Lancaume who played Nadine in the film comitted suicide in 2005 at age 32.
Virginie Despentes has said of her:

“She’s the only girl I knew whose big dream was to be a housewife. The first time she told me that, I preferred to put it aside, but knowing her better, I understood that it existed as a dream. It was her thing. We do not always do what we want.”

“Karen had a sweetness, an incredible femininity. And at the same time one felt she was ready to take an ax and destroy a wall.”

 

Soundtrack:

Virago – Ouvre moi (Rock music video)

 

Varou Jan – Ca commence mal (Opening theme)

 

Wei ji – Sweet belly (Sex solicitation scene)

 

Cox 6 – I’ll stay outside (Dance scene)

 

Pussy Killer – Cash

 

X syndicate – Fight

 

Varou jan – conscience feminine

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** This weekend d.l. Ferdinand gives us a rich and far ranging look into the film ‘Baise Moi’ and the Virginie Despentes novel on which it’s based. Whether you know the film but not the novel, know the novel but not the film, know both or neither, there’s a lot to learn, contemplate and/or enjoy on the blog’s plate. So please dig in, scour, etc. and pass along remarks to our kind and cogent guest-host, please. Thanks a ton, Ferdinand. ** David Ehrenstein, Merci for your merci. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Oh, darn, Tuesday. So your weekend is spoken for, I guess. Sorry. I hope you find unexpected nuggets of foxiness somewhere in that dreary slog. Well, of course, your love would save the day. Thank you. Love turning every word in your assignment into a comely young emo trans being with their jeans worn pubes-low and a come-hither look on their face, G. ** Misanthrope, The blog is a multi-timeframe locale. Yes, urgh, ugh, the confinement. The best I can hope for is that it’s a really soft one that looks and feels only slightly different than yesterday, and I’ll find out when I venture outside, assuming the govt. allows, shortly. 12 year-olds who think they’re too cool for school constitute some of the finest people in the world, but I do hope you whip his ass — not literally — at Xbox. Enjoy that, your guitar, and your freedom. ** Jack Skelley, Jackster! Me too, all the way, 1,000,000% on board. I grew up with a Disneyland map hung on the wall over my bed. You went to Heritage USA?! Now, that’s something. Remind me to pump you for details during the next book club. Yes, of course remember our Disneyland trip well and clearly, which is pretty good given that I’ve been to Disneyland … oh, 50 times maybe? I will try to turn my weekend into a hot slut, and me into a Viagra-crazed businessman, and you too. ** Steve Erickson, The punk in Cyberpunk made sense in the sense of a punk attitude relative to what I understood to be the general attitude towards scifi from its authors at the time. Or that’s how I took it. Although it was more New Wave than punk, I guess. Jeez, the landlord stuff, best of luck. I’m not sure about the effect pedal question. I would guess not, but I wish Paradigm was still around to answer you. ** Jeff J, Indeed, it was super great to talk! I don’t believe you’ve mentioned Patois Counselors to me, no, or I spaced if you did. Sounds extremely intriguing, I’ll snag that album. Thanks a lot, man, and have a peaceful weekend with a creative fount. ** Right. Let Ferdinand’s post wash over you fully and utterly until I see you next, which, technically, means on Monday.