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Les Saignantes (Jean-Pierre Bekolo, 2005)
Topic Started: Aug 5 2015, 08:32 PM (271 Views)
mesnalty
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g legs' flame
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If you google Les Saignantes, you'll see it described often as a "sci-fi lesbian vampire film," which is almost exactly wrong. But there are certainly science fictional, vampiric, and homoerotic elements.

The title is usually translated as The Bloodettes, but it's probably better translated as The Bloodletters, which is the first key to the vampiric nature of the main characters. It takes place in Cameroon in 2025 (in the future, even though Bekolo makes it clear he doesn't think Cameroon has a future) and follows two best friends trying to get rid of the body of a politician who died during sex with one of them.

The friends are "bloodletters" in the sense that they use their sexual power to try and rid Cameroonian society of its corruption and misogyny. It's largely a story of sexual empowerment, about the power of the clitoris (the mysterious force called mevoungou which is referred to cryptically throughout the film is named after a pre-colonial Cameroonian ceremony celebrating the clitoris).

Stylistically, Bekolo throws a bunch of stuff at the wall to see what sticks, and not everything does, but it makes for an exhilarating, shaggy experience.

BTW, thanks to Whyte Nite for pointing out the existence of this film to me!
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rischka
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nazi trumps fuck off!!
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ooooh the bloodettes! i think this was in world cup and i never got to watch it! brotherdeacon made some most intriguing remarks as i remember. thanks for giving me another chance at it :toast:
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Brotherdeacon
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It conjures willy-nilly
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For a non-Cameroon film viewer, Les Saignantes (The Bloodettes) can remain a deeply oblique work, of which its all too easy to remain content with the surface sparkle of sexuality, trance music and stereotyped male buffoons (though potentially dangerous). However director Jean-Pierre Bekolo seems much too intelligent and well-versed a film maker to be content with the aforementioned gaudy Nollywood styled direct-to-dvd entertainment. In fact I'm reminded of a quote from Olaf Möller in a Film Comment article on Nigerian video films, which applaud "sheer invention, born of utter poverty, from people desperate to tell themselves stories, to forge a cinema culture of their own, like the one they know from TV or video—but rooted in their own experience." Which is not to say Les Saignantes is following patterns of Nigerian cinema so much as the similarity I see in The Cameroon film utilizing modern iconic images and audio as a paradigm in which to insinuate political/gender/film theories. Each character a symbol, or a Trojan Horse carrying messages more important than the rather cheesy story may indicate.

Perhaps first, after viewing the film, I needed to research “mevungu” the unknown reference used throughout the length of the story by the two physically charged prostitute/sorceress characters Majolie and Chouchou. It appears “mevungu” is a ritual of feminine power among the Beti women of Cameroon, a group whose history before the introduction of Islam and Christianity was patterned around a strong matriarchal system of tribal authority. The rituals themselves celebrate the clitoris itself as a figurative and literal source of power, a psychic/spiritual means of protection against male tyranny. The sexual scene at the film's beginning, when the young Majolie in effect kills the country's corrupt aged leader by “pussy power” as it were, introduces us to the uses of sexuality in this modern reworking of “mevungu” retribution. Interesting just how emphatically Jean-Pierre Bekolo used sex to empower the women in this sci-fi, low-budget, trance culture peek into Cameroon history and modern political corruption—going so far as to create sexual assassins, something we might find in 70's Roger Corman quickies, or some Matt Helm detective spoof from the swinging 1960's in Hollywood. But, of course, Hollywood's long-legged comedic assassins were robotic women or misogynist bent intention, whereas Bekolo has imbued his sexy black women with intelligence, strength, a legacy of power, and a mission to save their country.

My reading also unsurfaced the core of “mevungu” organization to be a secret or quasi secret group of Beti tribal women leaders who had proved resourceful in their proto-feminist actions. We see these same grandmother leaders appearing and disappearing during the film, hierarchal women whose bearing and uniform clothing seemed almost militaristic, attempting order from their two sexy hormonal soldiers who've found themselves enmeshed in a low-comedy set of situational problems: finding a body for a decapitated head, repelling misogyny in the form of a mouth-breathing cab driver, manipulating the new politico wannabe (with proffered panties to sniff) to further their aims at helping turn the corruption and greed of a Cameroonian patriarchy back onto itself. Interestingly, “mevungu” rituals were known to be followed by times of prosperity for all, encouraging men to respect and fear it (this according to a chapter in Contemporary Matriarchies in Cameroonian Francophone Literature by Cheryl Toman).

Though the historical practices and references to women in Cameroonian society are interesting and pertinent still today, it would be wrong I think to imagine Bekolo is hinting at the tribal past as a form of modern salvation, he's well aware of _prisonniers dans les barbelés des traditions_, [prisoners caught in the barbed wire of tradition]. It's at this nexus I think that the film creates its most important function, that being the contradictions in Cameroonian, or most African life. The past vs present, male vs female, western culture vs indigenous culture, group dynamics in historical tribal politics vs post Colonial or global politics, both with elements of corrupt infrastructures and implementation. Bekolo is a student of modern theory, and has used his images as signage to hint, to inform, to arouse, to question societies in Cameroon and elsewhere. His stylistic flair is camp and fun, but underneath resides a seething dissatisfaction with the status quo and its poverty, class systems, iron-fisted governments, eradication of indigenous culture, gender misalignments in actual social potency, secular protections from fundamentalist religious influences, and more.


Les Saignantes (The Bloodettes) is a tidy piece of film making, assured and tongue in cheek, yet filled with ideas and contradictions included to make us think, and perhaps to act. It also incorporates an urban modernism (and rhinestone futurism) which is unusual in many Cameroonian films, or so I believe; the typical expectation being rural, tribal, historical. Bekolo is pointing his film and his actions into the future, a direction not often witnessed in African film. Luckily, films like this one are an impetus to branch out further into world cinema, especially multi-faceted African cinema, both modern and vintage. (I wrote this years ago in the same World Cup Rischka spoke of, hope it's still pertinent). :toast:
Edited by Brotherdeacon, Sep 5 2015, 05:34 AM.
“Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us. “
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