July 6, 2001

7:34 AM

The movie censored in France opens in the US this week.Base-Moi is being translated by the newspapers as "Rape Me" but a better translation would be "Fuck Me," which better indicates that sexual power that the main female characters have. They use sex as a weapon, as the gateway firearm to murders and massacre. Violent, bloody, aggressively sexual, even pornographic, filled with "chic amoralism," as the New York Times says, and perhaps difficult to redeem. Gratuitous everything.
posted by Mo Nickels (18 comments total)

Base-Moi also features an actual penetration shot.

Put that on a happy meal.
posted by dong_resin at 7:42 AM on July 6, 2001

This movie also discussed in a link here.
posted by trox at 7:49 AM on July 6, 2001

www.baisemoithemovie.com
posted by shoepal at 9:28 AM on July 6, 2001

posted by ParisParamus at 9:37 AM on July 6, 2001

Thanks for the typo correction. Je sais bien la orthographe de la verbe. My eyes having been blurring on me recently. I've been making typos all over the place that I don't catch, even after reading and re-reading my work. Something to do with reading 16 hours a day...

Would you not agree with my translation, however? I feel that the "Rape Me" translation is just a soft-pedaling for the Puritan Anglos.
posted by Mo Nickels at 9:42 AM on July 6, 2001

Mo: of course that's the translation. I wasn't trying to be obnoxious; just jealous that you live over there. It's a lousy movie, apparently.

Anyone remember Liquid Sky?
posted by ParisParamus at 9:47 AM on July 6, 2001

posted by ParisParamus at 9:48 AM on July 6, 2001

I read about this movie in the magazine Film Comment. At the time, I thought it sounded kind of interesting, and I still do, if only just because this movie meshes two genres of film in a way that really hasn't been done before. By meshes I mean that it is hopefully just more than a really violent porn flick. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to rent it.
posted by rift2001 at 9:54 AM on July 6, 2001

It's funny, lots of explicit sex and it's run-of-the-mill pornography. A little explicit sex and it's a worldwide scandal.

(I do recognize why it is so--I'm just saying, is all...)
posted by jpoulos at 12:24 PM on July 6, 2001

I don't trust human French - English translation anymore. Long live BabelFish which says Baise-Moi means "to kiss".
posted by aaronchristy at 2:20 PM on July 6, 2001

It does me to kiss. The Truffaut film Stolen Kisses =
Baisers Volés
posted by ParisParamus at 2:25 PM on July 6, 2001

The noun le baiser means "kiss." The verb baiser, on the other hand, no longer means the same thing.
posted by redfoxtail at 3:12 PM on July 6, 2001

I think it's safe to assume that the fuck/kiss juxtaposition of the title is wholly intentional.

That said, it's sadly amusing that our around-the-bend national morality is so bent that the concept of raping is somehow more marketably safe than fucking.
posted by Skot at 3:19 PM on July 6, 2001

I would have thought they could get the raw energy across with the simple translation Do Me (unless, of course, Nike owns that particular part of the dictionary these days).

Be sure to read the earlier article, Film Goes All the Way (In the Name of Art), which discusses this film in context with several others, such as Britain's Intimacy, which includes an explicit fellatio scene.

Can any native French speakers comment on the word? I know I was taught it as to kiss with no warnings. I've also known since then that in certain contexts ... Is it just context, or has the polite meaning been eclipsed? Is it the same way in Québec?
posted by dhartung at 3:39 PM on July 6, 2001

I think it's safe to assume that the fuck/kiss juxtaposition of the title is wholly intentional.

I'm not sure how much to read into the title (in French). I don't know for sure, but the euphemism "to kiss" is fairly old, possibly a century or more old. It is interesting in any case, to consider how a society, consciously or not, assimilates that act to kissing and treats that act in a less uptight/less sacred way.
posted by ParisParamus at 3:40 PM on July 6, 2001

I am not a native French speaker, but I am a current French major at Columbia University, just back from a year in France, with 12 French dictionaries to my name, and decent translation skills.

"Baiser" straight up means to kiss. It also means "to fuck" and is used that way in movies and in common argot. It is a highly contexutalized word. Proust using it, it probably means to kiss. Baudelaire using it, probably not. Baudelaire is winning: nobody I know in Paris really uses it for "kiss" anymore, for fear of being misunderstood.

So now if you want to says "to kiss" you use either "s'embrasser" or "embrasser" or "donner un baiser" (to give a kiss) or "donner les bises" (to give kisses). "Faire la bise" is what you do as a greeting.

You'll find that many of the things you were taught in French class are not true in common parlance.
posted by Mo Nickels at 6:50 PM on July 6, 2001

ParisParamus, I loved liquid sky, though I haven't seen it in years. Perhaps we could work a reference to it into a frontpage post about cult films that should be/have been re-released to the big screen.
posted by shoepal at 9:02 PM on July 7, 2001