‘After Blue’ is a Hypno-Sexual Fantasy [Review]
On the fictional planet After Blue, it is said that many of the social and technological advances on earth were banned in order to avoid the wars that lead to its destruction. Only people born with ovaries can acclimate to the new planet, lest they choke to death on their own hair. After Blue’s surviving colonizers include a Polish military, who sentence the rebellious Katarzyna Buszowska (Agata Buzek) to death by drowning in a full-body burial on the beach. But when she is freed by naive protagonist Roxy (Paula Luna), the elders on After Blue force the young girl and her mother on an expedition to hunt and gun down the rebel at all costs.
Tl;dr — On a funky ass planet, a team of futuristic lesbians is tasked to kill known space witch and criminal, Kate Bush.
In keeping with the themes from Mandico’s previous film, The Wild Boys, After Blue is partly about human flaws manifested in a fantasy world. The film begins with Roxy (nicknamed Toxic) telling her story in a void. She shoulders the guilt of her friends’ deaths after uncovering Kate Bush and watching her go on a killing spree as an act of revenge toward the planet’s elders. Throughout the film, the moral implications of Roxy’s mission become grayer by the moment.
Mandico asks all the important questions: how does one hunt a person who themselves were being hunted, and claim civility? Furthermore, what if I think she’s super hot and she visits me in my dreams? Truly, the hunt for Kate Bush is rife with tension. Everyone around Roxy also seems to have an ulterior motive for killing her, including an artist who illegally programs an android duplicate of her husband to be loyal to her.
To approach the film After Blue with a sense of conventional logic would be self-defeating. Though there is a clear arc underneath this hypnotic trip of a film, specific details about the plot and character development are as reliable to an objective understanding of the entire thing as would a dream. This is a compliment considering the best sci-fi films trust their audiences’ intelligence by not over-explaining themselves.
Suffice to say that the viewer can decide how much of writer/director Bertrand Mandico they want up in their brain folds. As an exercise in aesthetics, the film pushes beyond the infinite in terms of stagecraft and atmosphere. Mandico is equally obsessed with the idea of places as living beings as he is with betraying his own rules. Living beings are messy and prone to change, thus, the script is constantly evolving to accommodate every new quirk the planet and its inhabitants have to offer.
The visuals are impeccable, with the majority (if not all) of the special effects captured on film, in-camera. Tactility is somewhat of a lost facet of sci-fi filmmaking. But After Blue does not suffer from the stiffness of modern blockbusters. There also doesn’t appear to be a limit to what can be pulled out of the filmmakers’ imagination and onto the screen. Cinematographer Pascale Granel takes full advantage of the smaller sets with expressive lighting schemes that evoke Mario Bava’s low-budget adventure films. Make-up and costuming (designed by Knife + Heart’s Pauline Jacquard) are distinctive to each character’s personality. Each look achieves a perfect balance of feral and glamorous that even extends to nudity.
For those who thought David Lynch’s Dune was too conservative, and those who feel raw about Alejandro Jodorowsky’s take never coming to fruition, look no further. After Blue is a film for romantics and freaks alike. Where there are gorgeous vistas by the seaside and ethereal flora covering endless swaths of land, there are secret doors that lead to grottos that only respond via fingerfuck.
If the idea of an environment with no cis men or violence is at all exciting, the irony of a space militia and caste system on After Blue should persuade a viewer to keep their expectations fluid. And, speaking of, there is more viscous liquid emanating from several orifices (both human and not) in this film than anyone could ask for! At just over two hours, you don’t watch the film so much as you have to stare it down. Taking everything described in this review, along with esoteric lines like “painting exists only if eyes can embrace it”, Mandico lures you with the sensuous machinations of his world and dares you to stay.
There’s not a dull second in the film. When you’re not drowning in glitter and goo, you’re asking yourself: what is it that binds me to this corporeal form and can I fight it? Perhaps there are several shades of sci-fi more palatable if a viewer never engaged with the genre before. But if ever you get the chance to jump off the deep end with a film so erratically gorgeous as this, take it and don’t look back.
