TIFF 2021 Coverage: After Blue (Dirty Paradise) (2021) - Reviewed

 


"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. Incoherence that's an absence of cynicism but not irony. It's embracing the genre without penetrating it."
--Bertrand Mandico

Director Bertrand Mandico's first feature film Wild Boys (2017) was a luminous and exuberant celebration of sex and gender fluidity, casting women in male roles then tossing that masculinity aside in the actual film itself, changing them back into women, seamlessly shifting them back-and-forth until they existed in a space in-between. His work feels phantasmagorical, an alternate reality where the air is infused with glitter, and the lighting is always bisexual. He continues his path embracing the Incoherance Manifesto with After Blue (Dirty Paradise) a trippy acid-western sci-fi/fantasy hybrid that defies description.

After Blue is a post-Earth abode for humanity, but one in which all of the men have died out. Women are artificially inseminated with sperm saved from Earth and live on the planet with a new society with its own set of rules. The story follows Roxy (Paula Luna) a young teenager who feels like an outsider and her hairdresser mother Zora (Elina Löwensohn) who become entangled in a bounty hunt after Roxy releases Kate Bush (Agata Buzek) an enigmatic troublemaker.





The world of After Blue is wonderous to behold, full of color, shifting lights, incredibly detailed greenery and occasionally grotesque dripping creatures. It harkens back to the sparkling organic feel of '80s fantasy films like Legend (1985) or The NeverEnding Story (1984). There is not a single moment when the scenery isn't buzzing with titillation and sexual innuendo--the characters are often walking around topless or even fully nude, constantly caressing each other while having philosophical conversations. I am sure that the word that will get thrown around a lot when describing this film will be "pretentious" but it is more of a celebration of hedonism and excess. 

Mandico doesn't seems to be trying to say anything in particular with After Blue, it's more like he created the cinematic version of a tapestry, one that he has decorated with every accessory and laid out for the audience to marvel over. His work in general feels like the high fashion version of cinema where he plays around with the components of film and rearranges them in exotic ways. This concept seeps into the smaller details as well, with characters using guns named after fashion designers (one rifle is named after Gucci, for example) and a series of androids called Louis Vuitton. It's all in fun, not to be taken too seriously.





The film is over two hours, which definitely might test one's patience, but After Blue is an experience that should not be missed by fans of avant-garde or arthouse cinema.

--Michelle Kisner