Best friends Majolie and Chouchou are two beautiful young women trying to get ahead in a near-future Cameroon. After accidentally killing a powerful politician during sex, the two come up with a plot to dispose of the body, and get into the glamorous wakes that have taken over the local nightlife.
The Bloodettes, Die Blutenden
Canada Toronto International Film Festival 
Burkina Faso Ouagadougou Panafrican Film and Television Festival 
France Cannes Film Festival 
Cameroon France Burkina Faso Cameroon Canada France 
a story about women aspiring towards futurity in the face of postcolonial dystopia
the opening with her doing an erotic dance dangling by her hips from the ceiling...i was floored ! let that be me!
apparently 'mevoungou' refers to a kind of ancestral feminine wisdom/secret ritual celebrating women's reproductive capacities amongst Beti people in Cameroon, largely suppressed by French colonizers. the chorus of older women who kept popping in and out of the narrative can only represent some kind of guardians of this tradition i can presume. loved the fact that this tradition was harnessed by the women, that they gave themselves up to this force without completely understanding how it was affecting them, to combat corrupt politicians, abusers, and…
A film that challenges you to understand its context, a work that screams at you to take into your experience of watching it the world it was crafted in, this is a vicious political and social commentary that takes refuge in humor in many varieties: irony, gore, fantasy, and what may have been a pun or two (hard to say with the language barrier). Two sex workers (possibly queer? Criterion seemed to think so) drawn on the matriarchal legacy of their culture to survive the violent political landscape they end up in. Even as the film demands you draw in the reality this was made in, it slowly unravels any realism the film might have had to begin with. By…
invented facetiming with another astral plane to contact a group of ur female ancestors so they can help you escape the police pursuing you for murder
Jean-Pierre Bekolo's The Bloodettes is one of those rare films that makes you aware, even as it's happening, that you're watching something special. Made in Cameroon on a tiny budget, it's exhilarating to watch, full of passion and anger and the absolute joy of filmmaking. Packed with sex, and love, and the unexplained, it's science fiction, folk horror, and a celebration of women, all rolled into one, a mashup of influences and outrageous creativity. At various times, it remind me of films as diverse as Shopping (the propulsive use of music), Daughters of the Dust (its use of cheap, simple effect to great affect), and Welcome II the Terrordome (its near-future spotlight on corruption), and also seemed to look ahead…
"How can you make an action film in a country where acting is subversive? How can you make a horror film in a place where death is a party? How can you film a love story where love is impossible? How can you make a crime film in a country where investigation is forbidden?"
These are some of the questions The Bloodettes asks on billboards in its fourth-wall-ruptured sequence transitions. The year is 2025, and two women team up to dispose of the nation's secretary general's corpse after one of them fucks him and he dies. It's a nighttime odyssey, stylish and giallo-esque. They meet many sleazy men along the way--taxi drivers, policemen, more powerful political men.
The women share…
An African exploitation/horror satire that does everything it can think of to invert the misogynist, gendered tropes of the genre -- it even tries to dismantle the primacy of the male gaze. (Yeah, I know -- good luck with THAT...). Something about two ambiguously lesbian women, attuned to some orisha or other that they can't really control, who do battle against the vampires in Cameroon's government. Mostly by teasing them sexually until they die of heart failure.
If only it had been good enough -- funnier, maybe, or more coherent -- to live up to its promise. Still... the underlying concepts were dazzling, so it's at least a very very very very very very noble failure.
Hooptober X: Film 19/31
My friend is tired - Your corpse is beautiful.
This was fantastic. I've encountered too few depictions of sex workers that make no attempt to humiliate or degrade them in one way or another, and this film goes as far as to present Majolie and Chouchou as individuals with agency, financial stability, and the capability to navigate a treacherous political landscape. A perfect example of how to make a film about something without making it about something - these are individuals who are sex workers, not stagnant one-dimensional tropes. Their relationship is also so loving and protective, I love to see it. Shifting between body disposal, an outfit montage straight out of Lizzy McGuire, simultaneous orgasm…
Death by interpretive sex
more provotcative raw films devoid of pretension please
I don't totally understand what this movie is about. I wrongly assumed that it was a vampire film. I guess they're more like witches? Kind of a confusing mess. It's really nice to look at but the plot is convoluted and deliberately boring. The parts that are interesting are barely explored, like the coven of Bloodettes that eat giant grub worms and drink ecto cooler out of oversized novelty martini glasses while playing dress-up in a bedroom with a poster for Scream. Can I get a whole movie that's just THAT.
This is so exactly my shit oh my godddd
Jean-Pierre Bekolo's The Bloodettes (or Les saignantes, or Those Who Bleed, or whatever the hell I'm supposed to call it in English...) opens with a sex scene that feels far more like a performative art installation than a scene from an actual movie. That feeling never quite leaves the film, as Bekolo channels all the worst instincts of a student filmmaker; low quality shooting, annoying aesthetic choices and an ambitious plot without the wherewithal or skill to properly unpack it.
Admittedly, I have less of an understanding of the concept of afro-futurism than I'd like (apparently A Tribe Called Quest counts?), so The Bloodettes may be (and clearly is) looked upon more favourably by those with the added context. What…
