Baise-moi

Even the opening credits are terrifying: a collar of metal spikes and the face of a woman, mid-fuck, leering and grinning at the camera. Come on if you think you're hard enough. Cut to confusion and the shit lives of two seemingly unconnected women. Each flips, one murdering her brother, the other her flatmate. Then, finally, a narrative takes hold. Leaving town, Nadine (Bach) and Manu (Anderson) meet for the first time and set off on a sex and killing spree. Despentes and Trinh Thi's blistering digital film, adapted from the former's novel, is less a rape/revenge movie than an expression of freefalling anger against everything in the world as it's currently configured. It's also as unpredictable as true anger, raging against cinema, too. Set to an aggressive score, sex is not only unsimulated, but dispenses with the artifice of moaning and groaning, which it later viciously satirises. And 'Where are the witty lines?' the protagonists taunt, indifferently. Visceral, fearless, rough around the edges and luridly beautiful, this fabulous two-fingers of a film bypasses the brain and kicks in the gut.