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).

TIFF 2021 AFTER BLUE (Dirty Paradise): Reflections by Robert Aaron Mitchell

 

If cinema is a dream like state than Bertrand Mandico's latest film After Blue (Dirty Paradise) is pure uncut cinema. 

Bertrand created the Incoherence Manifesto in 2012 with fellow filmmaker Katrin Olafsdotir. Bertrand states, "To be incoherent means to have faith in cinema, it means to have a romantic approach, unformatted, free, disturbed and dreamlike, cinegenic, an epic narration." 

A voice says "You are no longer on your planet. You are in space."  Hues of red and blue wash over us. "The Earth was sick so we had to look elsewhere." Rules were set once After Blue was discovered. Rules to avoid the same errors of Earth. No machines, no wavelengths, no chemistry. Living in micro-communities, based on nationality. Laws were set to cut the bad weeds. When evil appears, it's roots are cut. There are no men on After Blue. Once the planet was colonized, they all died early on. The hair of the men grew inside because of the atmosphere. The population of After Blue continues when women are inseminated with good Earth sperm.

We meet a woman by the name of Roxy (Paula Luna). The village girls have named her Toxic. On a beach Roxy and three other women run around. They find a head submerged in the sandy beach.  They examine it and refer to it as an octo-whore. Soon the three women get tired of this find and strip naked and run out to the water to swim. The head begins to plead for Roxy to unearth it. "If you help me. I will grant you hidden desires. Three desires." The apple as a genie. Roxy frees the woman. Paradise might have been found but paradise still requires guns. As it is, the newly freed woman takes one of the guns stuck in the sand and shoots the three women who are still swimming. Setting off an epic narration of events. 

 

 

The woman Roxy has freed reveals that her name is Kate Bush. She is recognizable because she is tall, has a hairy arm, a tattoo and an eye between her legs. Kate has already granted Roxy her first wish by eliminating her friends.

The village arrives at Roxy's mother's Zona (Elina Löwensohn) salon to demand Roxy and her go out and find and kill Kate Bush. To further reinforce this demand the Gucci rifle they are handed to accomplish this has a blue glowing inscription YOU WILL KILL KATE BUSH.  

Slightly off topic but interesting, director Bertrand Mandico and Elina Löwensohn have began a project entitled "20+1 Projections" The project involves the pair making twenty-one short films in twenty-one years. The themes of aging and desire will run throughout these films. 

When the current Pandemic began to take hold in March and April of 2020 I was personally drawn to post-apocalyptic cinema. Not the drab color palette Mad Max kind of cinema though, the Italians making films in 1970s New York City kind of cinema. The Enzo G. Castellari kind of cinema. The explosion of color and ridiculous leather vest as armor cinema. 1990 Bronx Warriors, The New Barbarians. There is something comforting that during the end times people have great hair and rock regalia that is more fashion esthetic than pure defense. As the pandemic continues, it also comforts me the people crafting films right now, in the Almost End of Blue, are also exploring colorful post-apocalyptic landscapes.

 

After Blue is the direct descendant of Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo. After Blue is the child of David Pelham's 1970s sci-fi, paperback covers. It is also to say Bertrand Mandico's film is midnight madness.  The cinematography of Pascale Granel is exquisite as is the score by Pierre Desprats. 

Clearly with a film of this ambition and weirdness, you are either going to be on board with this trip or you will not be.

On a final note, surprisingly or perhaps not, the world of After Blue looks eerily similar to wandering a cattle ranch in South Texas after eating things that sprout up from the Earth.