TIFF 2021 AFTER BLUE: Reflections by Carol Borden

 

By: Carol Borden 

Bertrand Mandico After Blue (Dirty Paradise) / After Blue (Paradis Sale) (France, 2021) Humanity has moved off Earth, after wrecking it, and colonized another planet called, After Blue. Only “ovary-bearers” survived, as the planet has strange effects on the growth of hair and cis-men died when their hair grew inwards. The surviving high femme women made rules to prevent what happened on Earth from happening again. Well, at least some of it. They allowed only horses for travel and guns--bearing the brands of Gucci and Paul Smith--for hunting. They lived in small groups based on national identity, mostly. The film opens with a teenager named Roxy (Paula Luna) talking to another woman. She tells the story of finding a woman buried up to her neck in sand and releasing her in exchange for three wishes. Unfortunately for Roxy’s friends, the woman is the notorious criminal Kate Bush (Agata Buzek) and she kills all three of them.

As punishment the women of Roxy’s village order her mother, Zora (Elina Löwensohn), the village hairdresser, to hunt down Kate Bush and bring back proof of her death. Roxy comes along to help and because “she has nothing better to do.” And so they meet other women wearing broad brimmed 1970s lady hats for stetsons and glittery eye-shadow along the way and face death and sexual menace.

After Blue looks fantastic, with stylized space sound stages and dressing natural areas to they look like stylized space sound stages. I like the design of the dead. I like the sound design and the score. I like the make-up and the glowing femdroid eyes. Basically, I like almost everything about this film except the world-building and the story. They rub me wrong. I’m not comfortable with the implicit gender essentialism. And while I always enjoy rock people on alien worlds and dig these particular rock people’s geode heads, I’m not comfortable with the Indigenous people of After Blue, the “Indiams” or how they are treated or how they are represented even while knowing that Mandico probably means nothing by it. But I’m not in France. I’m in the United States. And “Indiams” especially rub me wrong after watching the TIFF Land Acknowledgment and a celebration of the work of Indigenous film maker and artist Alanis Obomsawin. And yes, I have watched Westerns with terrible people in them. And I have watched movies, like Neptune Frost, where the people are largely allegorical. But Zora aside, the women of After Blue are one note and that note is unpleasant. And the premise of a planet ruled by women who are sorta fashion-obsessed and whose civilization is catty and/or bitchy is hardly new. Please see nearly any post-World War II space lady movie from Cat-Women Of The Moon (1953) to Queen Of Outer Space (1958). (Ship Of Monsters / La Nave De Los Monstruous (1960) is lovely, though).  Sometimes stream of consciousness just washes up the easiest and shallowest thoughtless representations. I can’t help wondering what Neptune Frost (Rwanda / USA, 2021) or Night Raiders (Canada, 2021) might have been like with these resources. And I really hope we decolonize better before we colonize other worlds. The human women of After Blue have not learned enough.

After Blue reminds me of 1970s French science fiction comics and looks like a very faithful adaptation of one that is happy to stay in the 1970s. But you might not have this reaction. You might find more effective and playful satire than I did. Maybe you’re just looking for style and cool ideas for aliens and alien landscapes to wash over you. Like I said, After Blue is well within the tradition of French science fiction--especially bande dessinée science fiction and if you like that, you might like After Blue (Dirty Paradise).