Mandico, Bertrand

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    ‘She Is Conann’ Review: Queen of the Barbarians

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    This feminist riff on “Conan the Barbarian” is a sci-fi horror movie sprinkled with a bit of glam-rock fairy dust.“She Is Conann,” Bertrand Mandico’s gonzo-feminist riff on “Conan the Barbarian,” plays like an opera from hell. In the first few minutes, Rainer (Elina Löwensohn) — a humanoid hound who could be related to the Crypt Keeper — terrorizes an old woman wrapped in foil. The creature, who wears a boxy leather jacket and aviator sunglasses, struts around and monologues in a snakelike whisper, and then bites off a chunk of the woman’s flesh.Rainer leads the hapless dame into a sparkling cavern, where the queen of the barbarians herself, Conann, is perched on a high tower, clutching a human heart that looks more like a Christmas tree ornament.“She Is Conann” is a particularly nasty kind of sci-fi horror movie, sprinkled with a bit of glam-rock fairy dust. It unfolds almost entirely in a foggy underworld that resembles an elaborate haunted house. As opposed to computer-generated imagery, Mandico relies on built sets and practical effects, which give the film a stagey feel. Its unabashedly excessive scenes of violence also offer a gross-out realism.With Rainer as our guide, the plot loosely revolves around Conann’s ascension to power through the ages. First, she’s an innocent white teenager (Claire Duburcq) who witnesses a band of sadistic warriors chop her mother in half; then, she’s an androgynous 20-something (Christa Théret) who looks like the offspring of David Bowie. In the lengthiest act, she’s a Black woman with a fierce buzz cut and metallic threads (Sandra Parfait) living in a metropolis with her girlfriend.It’s more of a fever dream than an actual story, offering a queer counternarrative to the macho vision of the legendary warrior that is as hypnotic as it is gnarly.She Is ConannNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘After Blue (Dirty Paradise)’ Review: A Fever Dream Adventure

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      A planet of women is the eye-popping setting for this psychedelic movie, in which a mother and her daughter try to find an escaped criminal named Kate Bush.After unwittingly freeing a dangerous outlaw, Roxy (Paula Luna) must take off on a journey to repair her mistake by killing the escapee, aided by her mother, Zora (Elina Löwensohn). Sounds straightforward enough, but context matters: This all takes place on After Blue, the planet where humans decamped after wrecking Earth — only “ovarian-bearers” survived, though, because the atmosphere made the men’s hairs grow inside of them and they all died.The fugitive, Kate Bush (Agata Buzek), is just one of the encounters Roxy (“but the village girls call me Toxic”) and her mom make over the course of Bertrand Mandico’s psychedelic fever dream of a movie. We expect no less from a director who subscribes to a filmmaking manifesto called International Incoherence (sample: “Actors will alternate non acting and overacting”).Mandico works in the overheated, maximally art directed tradition of Kenneth Anger and Alejandro Jodorowsky, and “After Blue (Dirty Paradise)” is most effective if you just go along with whatever craziness pops up on the screen. The film is a picaresque western/science fiction hybrid in which the most surreal events are treated with matter-of-fact calm, as when Roxy burrows her face into the many-tentacled crotch of a male android or when a sexy artist (Vimala Pons, who, like Löwensohn, also was in Mandico’s extravagant debut feature, “The Wild Boys,” from 2018) turns up and seduces Zora. It’s unclear what Mandico is trying to say, if anything, and the film overstays its welcome — even the wildest visuals lose their power to stun after a while — but “After Blue” certainly is sui generis.After Blue (Dirty Paradise)Not rated. In French, English and Polish, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 7 minutes. In theaters. More