When Lohman’s circus acquires a jaguar, they don’t realize it’s carrying something unexpected inside of it. They only realize that the new cat is reacting strongly to the lion tamer’s assistant Yanka (Emmanuelle Escourrou) and that jittery quality is passing to all the cats in the show. The cause will soon be revealed … but it will require a trigger.
That trigger arrives in the form of jealous animal tamer Lohman (Christian Sinniger), who catches his object of affection snogging the animal seller and winds up smacks Yanka around. This is the deed that puts her on the course of running away, but it’s also the one to set a more terrifying plot in motion.
That night, the jaguar seemingly explodes from within, throwing a monstrous parasite into the world. Looking for somewhere to hide, it encounters Yanka and crawls right into her womb. Soon after, it speaks to her (voiced by Alain Robak), ultimately dominating her into performing its will. Getting away from the circus is one thing. When Lohman finds her a month later, it convinces her to stab him. And when he’s down, it urges her to cut his throat and drink his blood. The creature pretending to be a baby in Yanka’s womb needs its strength, you see, if it’s ever going to be born.
Over the course of the next nine months, Yanka shifts from an unwilling murderer to a much more willing one, attracting a special breed of hideous male, often (but not always) wooing them as a means of bringing them somewhere out of the public eye, and then dispatching them and drinking their vitae. This is the case with unfaithful Richard (Jean-Francois Galloutte), whose woman Rosette (Roselyne Geslot) comes looking for him. Of course, later on, when she becomes a Taxi driver, she can both use the car as a transportation and, in the case of an unlucky jogger (Jacques Audiard), as a weapon.
However, Yanka is also haunted by nightmares of the thing growing inside. When it is ready to be born, what will it look like? Will she survive the experience? And when this creature is finally released, how will she feel about separation from the one unhealthy yet oddly positive relationship she’s maintained? Alain Robak directs and co-writes a gruesome black comedy with a splattery tale of the fantastique and symbiosis called Baby Blood (1990).
Tales of gore-drenched fantasy are seldom as funny as this oddball gem from the early 1990s. It begins not in France, not in the urban landscapes that will dominate much of the running time. Instead, it begins in the sea, as we witness the powerful eruptions of underwater volcanos and listen to a voiceover (the snake creature, in fact) talking about evolution and the shaping of the world we live in. According to that monologue, the creature itself is the one being on earth that has not evolved even slightly since the dawn of the world. That will come in time, apparently, as it has a destiny in the millennia to come.
Then, the action shifts to an African village, peopled by stock natives and one wily Frenchman who is buying a creature we cannot see. Much of this is taken from that creature’s point of view, tucked behind a cage’s steel bars.
Finally, we get to the circus where the creature is revealed to be the gorgeous big cat, and the action ensues. It would seem then, that the protagonist is actually not any of the human beings, but the monster itself, and it certainly encounters some shifts and changes over the running time. Yanka, however, is a carrier, initially antagonistic to the parasite, but her presence and growing affection will cause it to begin the changes that will see it to that eventual destiny. Instead of being a solo thing, a creature accustomed to seeing its will done, damn the torpedoes, it develops affection for its nurturing force. Along the way, Yanka and the creature are responsible for a lot of mayhem and bloodshed.
Or is Yanka herself the protagonist? She changes a bit from the person she was at the start of the story, developing some grit and will not to be victimized by the strong willed men (and occasional strong-willed women) she encounters. However, that shift in character is pretty much done by the film’s midpoint.
In fact, the role of protagonist gets handed off between those two characters. The film is not interested in presenting a typical monster movie or bloody nightmare film. It wants to grapple with concepts like motherhood, like the sad inability for many men and women to achieve anything approaching mutual respect and understanding, and for the ways that violence is woven into existence. By kicking off with scenes of volcanic fury, the film suggests that the earth was created not with love’s gentle caress, and everything that followed those early days of volcanic violence is touched by the violence. Every species that lives upon the world that came about this way is inexorably intertwined in violent, penetrative acts, whether for purposes of consumption, communication (for example, a couple of paramedics in the film cannot talk without belittling or threatening one another), or procreation.
The relationship between Yanka and her little passenger is initially an abusive one—the creature can instill pain as a punishment when she disobeys, either trying to stab herself or refusing to go along with the creature’s desires. Over time, the abuses fall to the wayside and an unusual symbiosis results. We are left to wonder if there is a meeting of the minds or a case of Stockholm Syndrome at work. The film offers no real answers on that front. No real answers at all. But there is a lot to look at, more to think about, and maybe even plenty of conversation starters.
Some of the themes and ideas present here would be later explored (from a woman’s perspective) by writer/director/actor Alice Lowe in the film Prevenge (2016). There, as here, we get an in utero horror that commands its mother to shed innocent (and not-so-innocent) blood. Of course, the body horror angle feels like a synthesis of Cronenberg’s visions with those clever and gruesome dark fantasies forming several entries in Clive Barker’s Books of Blood.
Emmanuelle Escourrou carries much of the movie on her shoulders. She’s good as the woman who pretty much talks to herself and transforms from a victim to a seductress and murderess in time. There’s a naturalness to the performance that is enjoyable.
Alain Robak makes the creature an intriguing character that we seldom actually see. As well, he gets to play one of the asshole ambulance men (another bit of work that’s mostly voice over).
The cast of victims each bring interesting qualities to the piece. Sinniger plays a man obsessed with the woman who escaped him with verve, Galloutte is wonderfully watchable as the sleazy little turd who promises to be faithful to one girl and then almost immediately actively pursues another, Rémy Roubakha charms as the man who takes the absolute wrong taxi, Jacques Audiard is fun as the jogger who cannot outrun an automobile … There are plenty more, and each of the actors is having terrific fun with the part.
Cinematographer Bernard Dechet has had a lengthy career behind the camera, with credits ranging from the 1970s to the 2010s. The camera movements and lighting choices are intriguing. We always have something interesting to look at.
The gore effects, makeup, puppets and whatnot are quite nicely done as well. Kudos to the team(s) responsible. I was particularly impressed with an infant’s shed flesh that looks somewhat like a cobra’s skin, and a pair of nightmarish and nightmarishly long arms that punched up from Yanka’s gut in one of her nightmares.
The Kino-Lorber Blu-ray release includes an audio commentary from film historian Lee Gambino and critic Jarret Gahan, as well as both the original French and English language dubs (the latter features Gary Oldman as the voice of the fetus monster).
Baby Blood is a clever and creative film that plays with the concepts of birth and motherhood in a gruesome and often blackly comic tale of the fantastique. Fans of Clive Barker’s fusion of eroticism, wit, and horror will find plenty to enjoy here. Gorehounds looking for a bloody exercise will have little o complain about. Art house horror afficionados will find plenty worth contemplating and considering in the run time. Folks who are averse to bloodletting should probably move along. While this isn’t as cruel a picture as some of the New French Terror offerings I’ve seen (the humor does a fine job of making much of the mayhem watchable), it’s nevertheless a film featuring buckets of blood.
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Baby Blood is available in DVD and Blu-ray editions.
Writing for “A Violent Creation: Baby Blood” is copyright © 2024 by Daniel R. Robichaud.
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