Nighstream: After Blue (2021)

Nighstream Screening: AFTER BLUE (DIRTY PARADISE)

Dir. Bertrand Mandico

After the release of Mandico’s feature film debut The Wild Boys (2017), the director established a filmmaking manifesto. Other creators have done so in the past with varying success. There’s the Antonioni Manifesta, Dogme 95, Furturist Cenima, and Hitchcock Manifesto that have all had their day. There’s also Zen Filmmaking which in theory sounded fantastic. No rules or definitions, there’s no script, and everything relies on the creative energy of the filmmaker to make a spiritually pure filmmaking process. In practice, Zen Filmmaking films look more like 1993 episodes of Power Rangers than anything that resembles art cinema. But for all the pretension of a cinematic proclamation, Mandico’s Incoherence Manifesto, remains an intriguing premise and can produce spectacular results if After Blue is any indication.

There are 12 commandments of the Incoherence Manifesto all leading toward a faith in cinema. As Mandico states in a 2018 interview with Screen Anarchy, “[Incoherence] that’s an absence of cynicism but not irony. It is embracing the genre without penetrating it.” He calls it a flamboyant surge, not a dogma. Your script rejects normal rules of storytelling and incorporates more than two genres. All of your sound is done in post-production. You may only film on expired 16mm, 35mm, or Super 8mm film stock. All special effects and optical effects are done in-camera. All materials in the mise-en-scene are found materials. You should ban realism when it comes to setting. The director must be the author, cinematographer, and art director. Your actors must pivot between non-acting and overacting. And, lastly, the film must not belong to any pre-existing aesthetic. Following these 12 points would be a tall order for any creative, but Mandico follows them and soars high above his audience in After Blue.

I have six handwritten pages of notes in front of me. I wrote down everything I saw to be able to make some sense out of what I’d seen, that didn’t work. For comparison, most films I review are one or two pages. That’s because most films are easy to digest. We can go with that first, After Blue is not easy to digest.

There is a lot of literal world building within the first few lines of narration. The Earth is dead, humans have colonized on the titular planet, and eventually all the men died. The new world is separated into female communities, and all evil found within the remaining humans must be cut at the root. Civilization has survived as the women inseminate themselves with remaining Earth sperm. Generations are able to continue, though their new home transforms further into a dirty paradise daily.

On a beach, we meet Roxy and her friends. Her friends are also her tormentors. They’ve nicknamed her, Toxic. The group finds a slimy head resting in the sand. The bullies won’t touch it. Curious, Roxy cleans algae off its face and finds that a woman has been buried on the beach. The woman, still alive, tells Roxy if she unearths her, she’ll be granted three wishes. Roxy frees her, and our story begins.

Okay, it’s going to be the story of a genie granting wishes. A dystopian feminist Aladdin told with glitter, red and blue filters, and eroticism. My first guess turned out to be wrong as we uncover the fact that it was no female genie buried in the sand. It was the nemesis of all women, the vengeful arm of After Blue, the dastardly Katajena Bushowsky – Kate Bush. Now Roxy and her mother are tasked with hunting down and killing Kate Bush before her influence can spread. As the mother and daughter wander the wastelands, the tropes become clear. After Blue is an avant-garde lesbian western wearing a Science Fiction façade. Filled to the brim with surrealist queer imagery that would have made Derek Jarman proud. Characters use gooey alien creatures as vibrators, cut open monsters and bathe in their fluids, androids have nipples that secrete slime when aroused, and third eyes appear within pubic hair. All mechanical items in the film are named after designer products in a tongue-and-cheek criticism of our love of weapons. The guns we encounter are made by Gucci, Chanel, and Paul Smith.

The film triggers our fever dreams. Even within the worlds of sci-fi and westerns, there’s nowhere to take comfort as the film stretches you to the limit of your own understanding. If you put on your David Lynch sunglasses, slip into your Panos Cosmatos pajamas, and sip your John Waters beverage while trying to watch Sam Peckinpah you may find the right wavelength to experience After Blue.

Thinking about the three wishes aspect, maybe Roxy does get her wishes: destroy bullies, tentacle sex with an android named Louis Vuitton, and growing a third eye in her groin. It is a variation on Aladdin, I knew it!