There’s this bizarre French filmmaker, Bertrand Mandico. He has a brand new film I’ve seen folks raving about referred to as SHE IS CONANN. After I examine it, I spotted that over the previous few years I’ve examine two different motion pictures of his that additionally sounded actually intriguing. So I made a decision to lastly strive one.

AFTER BLUE (DIRTY PARADISE) is his second film, it’s on Shudder along with DVD and blu-ray, however it’s not horror. The reductive method I considered to explain it’s “Jodorowsky’s BARBARELLA,” then I observed that the promo supplies from distributor Altered Innocence name it “a lesbian EL TOPO (in house!),” so I assume I’m not the one one to consider it that method. However I believe mine is a bit more exact.

It’s set on a planet referred to as After Blue, the place folks moved to when “the Earth was sick, rotten,” and made new guidelines banning electronics and screens “to keep away from the identical errors.” All the pieces works otherwise there. For instance, one thing concerning the environment makes hair develop in your neck, and for males it grows inward, so all of them died off. Fortunately, girls could be inseminated “with good Earth sperm.”

Recommending it to mates I felt I needed to embrace the caveat “it’s type of a intercourse film,” however that’s inaccurate. It’s not pornographic in any respect, and doesn’t appear designed for the viewer to get off on, however should appear scandalous to some as a result of the primary character (performed by Paula Luna) is supposed to be a young person as she’s, uh, discovering stuff.

Her identify is Roxy, however the different women in her village decide on her by calling her “Poisonous.” In the future once they’re working round on the seaside Roxy notices a human head within the sand, then realizes it’s not a severed head however a lady buried as much as her neck. The opposite women taunt and threaten the lady, however once they run off to swim the lady guarantees to satisfy three of Roxy’s wishes, like she’s a rattling magic fish. So Roxy frees her. The girl could be very seductive, in lots of meanings of the phrase. She comes out of the outlet lined in glitter and dirt, shoots the opposite women with their very own rifle, then comes over and makes out with Roxy, smearing her with the glitter and barely slicing her neck earlier than taking off. So I believe she represents Roxy’s curiosity about each sexuality and her darkish facet, her anarchic facet.

Roxy likes crawling into holes. For instance she crawls underground to smoke a caterpillar and contact herself whereas occupied with that woman. By the cracks within the floorboards she hears the ladies of the village confronting her mom Zora (Elina Löwensohn, SCHINDLER’S LIST, NADJA) about her daughter liberating a infamous killer who had been imprisoned that method by the Polish militia. A few of Roxy’s hair pokes by way of a crack and a lady steps on it. Roxy and Zora are ejected from the group and might’t return till they kill Kate Bush.

Sure, I’ve been withholding that the killer is known as Kate Bush. They are saying it dozens of instances all through the film – Kate Bush this, Kate Bush that. A reference to the singer, I’m positive, however not the identical individual. This one has a particular face but additionally you could acknowledge her from her one furry arm or the blue stain tattooed over her coronary heart. Roxy additionally is aware of she has a 3rd eye in her pubis, however she doesn’t inform anyone that half.

So this can be a surreal house western with Roxy and her mother journeying throughout weird landscapes, looking for methods to outlive. Roxy is taunted by her lifeless mates in ghostly visions, and haunted by her attraction to Kate Bush. Each body appears unusual and delightful, with many scenes washed in purple, blue, crimson, yellow or inexperienced, like a psychedelic fantasy novel cowl. There’s no inexperienced display, simply actual nature and units infused with otherworldly crops, orbs, gems, slime. One other film it jogged my memory of just a little was Lucio Fulci’s CONQUEST – that hazy, dreamy magnificence with some monsters and bloody savagery.

Zora usually mentions that she’s merely a hairdresser, and I’m unsure if meaning the identical factor as right here or not as a result of the one hair we see her slicing is on necks, with a straight razor outfitted with just a little blue mild to assist her see what she’s slicing. They camp in a translucent tent formed like a crystal. Their weapons have lengthy pencil-thin barrels, make a charging sound like a defibrillator if you cock them, and have identify manufacturers (Zora’s is an outdated Gucci).

Horses have been imported from Earth, however perhaps After Blue modifications their biology too. After we first see Kate Bush’s horse it has all its organs on the skin. By the top it’s so mutated it’s strolling round upright and has a large sucker mouth like a lamprey. She simply makes use of the reins like a leash.

As a lot as Roxy longs for Kate Bush, she goes wild the primary time she sees a person. She runs straight for his crotch, the place there are a bunch of bizarre tentacles that fondle her face. Later she squeezes his nipple and just a little little bit of blue stuff oozes out, then a marble, which she retains together with her and smells to recollect him. Seems she’s straight, I assume, if she’s into that.

Wait – how is there a person? Seems he’s an android named Olgar-2 (Michaël Erpelding) who belongs to Sternberg (Vimala Pons, ELLE), a rich artist who reminisces about “the top of screens” and “the neo-virtualists,” and packs a Chanel. She says Olgar hates her self portraits with floral hats, though he’s blind. She invitations them to dinner and talks alot of shit about her rivals Kiefer (Pauline Lorillard, THE WILD BOYS) and Climax (Anaïs Thomas, SAINT LAURENT) and their “unbelievably banal” ultra-neoclassical torso sculptures.

Kiefer and Climax put on furs and have mild up eye lids. Zora presents them 50 {dollars} and the bounty to kill kate Bush. “We’re artists. Not killers,” they are saying. “70.”

My mates, I do know that a few of you’ll reject AFTER BLUE, as a result of it’s 129 minutes lengthy and never as taken with narrative as we typically want. To really put terror into your coronary heart, I’ll inform you {that a} dozen years in the past Mandico co-authored a manifesto referred to as “Worldwide / INCOHERENCE,” and in an interview he stated “To be incoherent means to place confidence in cinema, it means to have a romantic strategy, unformatted, free, disturbed and dreamlike, cinegenic, an epic narration.” However I seemed up the manifesto and it’s principally describing his idiosyncratic filmmaking strategies: unfastened screenplay, all sound and no FX carried out in submit, expired movie inventory, plus ambiguous geography and time interval within the story, and “containing a minimum of two genres.”

I might say that is extra enigmatic than incoherent. For me it was utterly fascinating, a transporting expertise. I like its strategy to so-called world constructing – it looks like a full fantasy actuality has been created however no person’s gonna give us sufficient of it to completely perceive. There’s a pleasant mixture of poetry and comical absurdity to the odd issues they are saying: warning that Kate Bush “may reduce her personal horse’s throat whereas listening to disco,” speaking about liquid music and diamond bullets, Olgar-2 confessing that he dearly needs to know what it feels prefer to be shaved.

It’s additionally one of the vital visually stunning motion pictures I’ve seen shortly. It does look like true that Mandico shoots all on movie and does every part in digicam, no digital FX or inexperienced display or something, however he is aware of precisely the way to mild and filter and embellish the settings to make them look fantastical.

Even the top credit are laborious to look away from!

I used to be actually interested in who would make a film like this. He’s not a younger ‘un, he’s just a little bit older than me, he’s simply spent a lot of his time doing quick movies. One in all his long run initiatives is a plan to make 21 aging-and-desire-themed quick movies in 21 years with Löwensohn, who performs Zora right here. (They’ve carried out greater than 21 collectively however I’m unclear what number of are a part of this undertaking.)

In an interview with Selection Mandico names Jean Cocteau, Sergio Leone and FANTASTIC PLANET as influences on AFTER BLUE. He mentions that way back (the ‘90s, I believe) he studied animation and collage at Gobelins, and beloved Japanese-European animators, particularly Jan Svankmajer. These all make sense. He’s an arty weirdo who’s into cool shit. I’ll discover additional.