Baise-Moi (aka Fuck Me; aka Rape Me)

I like a good controversy, and Baise-Moi, upon release a few years back, was nothing if not controversial. Even its native France was divided over whether such a film should be banned. France?! Considered by many to be the home of cinema and usually above such proletarian concerns as censorship... "My, oh my, che razza di film e' questo?" I wondered to myself.

The basic plot is: two women, strangers who meet one night, go on a crazed kill spree, following the rape of one of them.

They kill on a whim any man who crosses their path and quite a few women too, most notably at an orgy/sex club.

Over here in the UK our version has been shorn of a couple of its most extreme moments, but some of the hardcore sex has been left intact. This is one of that wave of cinema of that time that delighted in including full penetration, and here as in a couple of other flicks a porn star takes one of the leads to help facilitate such scenes.

So, it's Thelma and Louise meets Ms. 45 meets Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer? Well, maybe.

Does it live up to all the hype? Well, maybe.

Is it any good? Well, maybe...

That's the overriding impression I took from this maybe. It's a bit "Well, maybe." Not a terrible film, as some would have you believe, but a short film that could have been shorter still for its lack of real plot.

Tough to score, since it's more an experience, or ordeal, than a film for pleasure. But overall I'd give it 52 out of 100. That's not a wholly accurate score, since it could have been more than twice as good as it is, but it places it in the right context in my list of films rated so far.

Inside Deep Throat

Never having seen Deep Throat, I nonetheless threw myself in to watch Inside Deep Throat, which is a documentary about the making, impact, and legacy of that seminal porn movie. The film is narrated by Dennis Hopper and was made for HBO, so how bad could it be?

Truth is, it's not a bad movie. Indeed, it's good enough that you want it to be a bit longer than its 90 minute running time; but at the same time, the reason you want it longer (ooh er, missus) is because it's a bit lacking in substance. So, something of a dilemma, then.

Of course, while the film is, on the surface, about a porn movie, it's really about breaking social taboos and fighting censorship in general. It's about the First Amendment right to freedom of speech. So there really was plenty of scope to make something of an epic documentary here. A lost opportunity perhaps.

Still, there's a bunch of talking heads of varying degrees of interest, including Norman Mailer, Bill Maher, Larry Flynt, and Hugh Hefner.

A couple of standout scenes for me were:

(1) porn actresses at a recent Adult Video Awards ceremony being asked if they'd seen Deep Throat. They all replied that they hadn't, with one asking, "Oh, isn't that with that woman who died? I forget her name." This is a bugbear for me, and so commonplace these days: that people have no idea of their history, not even within their chosen professions, whether porn, "respectable" film-making, or the music industry. Get aware, people.

(2) the idiot prosecutor who prosecuted Deep Throat way back when. He said something to the effect of how he was looking forward to getting the world rid of terrorists and heavily implied that then we would be able to get on with the real work of fighting immorality such as porn. Fucking dumb cunt.

So, the scores on the doors for this: 60 points -- not all it could have been, but not bad.