SHORT SYNOPSIS

Based on the novel by Virginie Despentes of the same title. Manu and Nadine lose their last tenuous relationship with mainstream society when Manu gets raped and Nadine sees her only friend being shot. After a chance encounter, they embark on an explosive journey of sex and murder. Perhaps as revenge against men, perhaps as a revolt against bourgeois society, but certainly in a negation - almost joyful in its senseless violence - of all the codes of a society which has excluded, raped and humiliated them. Controversial for its violence and real sex scenes: a vividly nihilist road movie set in France.

DIRECTORS’ COMMENT

In 1995, I sold the film rights to my novel BAISE-MOI to Philippe Godeau, who suggested that I direct the film myself. The project was set in motion: the problem was finding two actresses to play Nadine and Manu, the heroines. During this period, I got a taste of what it means to make a film. I learned the need to film characters, to give a physical face, a voice, a look and a body to what I had previously only imagined.

In 1999, I saw EXHIBITIONS 1999, (John B. Root), a docu-drama featuring interviews with ten French porn actresses. Karen and Rafaella stuck me immediately as the only choices for Nadine and Manu. I also called Coralie straight away: she barely paused, sharing my enthusiasm from the beginning.

We quickly wrote an adaptation which remained entirely true to the novel. Then met Karen and Raffaela, who were seduced by the project.

I proposed to Coralie that she co-direct the film as she both knew and understood the world I wanted to show, and because she had a vision that was entirely at one with my work.

She and I shared the vision of a feminist battle, an avant garde battle, as well as certain fondness for provocation.

Baise Moi is a brutal book, a troubled book. Nadine and Manu aren't "bad girls", they simply want to live, truly live, whatever it takes. An unfortunate combination of circumstances is all it takes to push them across the boundary between good and evil, the possible and the impossible. Music,violence, sex, the road, humour: it's all adrenalin, a sure way to avoid the worst fate of all: obedience, submission, renunciation of the self -boredom.

Music is everywhere in the book. We wanted to carve out an equivalent place in the film. Soundtrack duties were handed over to Var. Jan, a truly experienced musician and composer who understands perfectly my take on music. Music conveys raw emotions: it surrounds Nadine and Mann incessantly, echoing everything they feel.

They feel alive when they murder, but it's not as simple as that. A moment, a single misplaced gesture and the whole thing will collapse. The trigger pressed too late, through pity, through remorse. They are outlaws. No excuses, no explanations, no intellectualization.

They are close to us, because they are beyond judgement. Sensation, not thought.

When they fuck, they let themselves go, they feel alive. They don't ask why, they don't think about what will happen next. While it's happening, it feels good; they don't think about anything else: they are set free. To film the sex scenes "for real", without stand-ins, was vital, as this was the first time that women being fucked would be shown, but also a lot more than that. Time to finish with fragmentation. These scenes had to be real, to do that. Time to return their complete bodies to women, of which they have always been deprived.

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.

It was vital that the film should remain faithful to the spirit of the book. A blood-soaked road movie, but human, without artifice. Also, the decision to work with two directors, with a tiny crew, in natural light, on video, with non-professional actors who were nonetheless very close to their characters, with a hardcore soundtrack... all this came naturally. We had to get to the heart of things, to places normally avoided. We wanted to dig deep, in order to end up right inside.

- It's not my idea of literature.

- Nor mine.

(Sagan and Sollers on the book Baise-Moi)

It won't be their idea of cinema either.