French film shouldn't be shown here, says commissioner

An uproar has developed over the decision to allow a French film labelled as 'pornographic' to be released into New Zealand cinemas.

It's prompted another call for a review of the country's censorship laws.

The film, 'Baise-moi', is representative of a particularly nasty new wave of French cinema, glorifying sex and violence as 'cool'.

The film is being released internationally under the English title 'Kiss me', because the correct translation is so coarse it wouldn't be acceptable on posters or billboards.

It's been given an R18 rating in this country.

The Commissioner for Children, Roger McLay, is calling for the movie to be banned here. He said it's without any merit and is 'a grubby piece of what some academics call art'.

He said it's likely many children under 18 will end up viewing the film.

It was released with strict restrictions in Britain and banned completely in Ontario, Canada.

'Baise-Moi' proved to be a bit too much even for the normally liberal French. Three days after its release and following complaints from right-wing politicians, the movie was reclassified with a rating that effectively banned it from all but a few French porno houses.

Its co-director Coralie Trinh Thi (she made the film with Virginie Despentes, on whose novel it's based) has worked in the French porn industry, as have the two lead actresses, Raffaëla Anderson and Karen Bach (also known as Karen Lancaume).

The story follows two women, the tall prostitute Nadine (Bach), and the diminutive Manu (Anderson), a sometime porn actress. After each commits a murder and goes on the run, they meet up and go on a sex-and-murder spree that's seemingly motivated by nothing more than boredom.

In 'Baise-moi' life is a dead-end, spirit-destroying journey of futility, so these two have made the decision to feel alive by having sex with and/or killing whoever crosses their path. Their first murder is a woman they rob at an ATM machine; another victim is a man they pick up and turn against when he wants to use a condom; and so it goes on.

In existential style, the two women are presented as freer than the society whose rules they shun. But reviewers say there's no charm, nor wit to these characters. And as is so often the case, the regular stream of sex and violence in the film becomes so numbing after a while, it loses its shock factor, and simply bored many critics.

The 'rotten tomatoes' movie review website summed it up thus: "heavy on the sex and violence, (Baise-moi) is not so much daring as a sloppy piece of work".

And the Chicago Tribune labelled it a "fast-moving shocker, but it's a dull shocker, so morally dead that it deadens you to watch it."