Bertrand Mandico’s second feature film after “Les Garçons sauvage”, “After Blue” confirms the filmmaker’s obsessions with a new film reserved for an informed public. Waiting for the third part of his trilogy.
WHAT DOES IT TALK ABOUT ?
In the distant future, on a wild planet, Roxy, a lonely teenager, frees a criminal buried under the sands. Barely released, the latter sows death. Held responsible, Roxy and her mother Zora are banished from their community and condemned to hunt down the murderess. They then survey the supernatural territories of their dirty paradise…
“After Blue” by Bertrand Mandico – With Paula Luna, Elina Löwensohn, Vimala Pons… – Released February 16
STARTING AT WHAT AGE ?
After Blue is prohibited for children under 12 years old. It receives the same classification as the short film Ultra Pulpe, which passed through Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018, but is a notch below Les Garçons Sauvages, prohibited for children under 12 with a warning during its passage. in cinemas, in February of the same year.
BERTRAND MANDICO: EPISODE II
Four years ago, almost to the day, Les Garçons sauvage enabled audiences who were unfamiliar with its courts to discover the cinema of Bertrand Mandico. Because in this first feature film, a visual UFO against a backdrop of transidentity, the French filmmaker’s taste for sex, blood and the mixture of fluids and genres (sexual and cinematographic) was apparent.
Elements that can still be found in After Blue, with more colors than in Les Garçons sauvage, mostly in black and white. And with a slightly retro patina that gives this cross between SF, western and fantasy the impression of coming out of the 60s, even in the post-synchronization of sounds.
Written eighteen years ago to be interpreted, among others, by Guillaume Depardieu, Katerina Golubeva and Maurice Garrel, all since deceased, After Blue started again after the realization of Wild Boys. And this tale-like story, which was initially to take place in North America and which its director then described as a neo-western, has changed planets to echo current ecological concerns.
UFO Cast Vimala Pons in “After Blue”
After Blue is therefore this new planet on which men die, victims of their hairiness. And the theater in which Bertrand Mandico mixes his obsessions and his many influences: in an interview given to the site Chaos Reignit claims no less than 78 references, ranging from Dune (for the side “space opera, punk and esoteric”) to Querelle and its assumed studio aesthetic, via Planet of the Apes, the bestiary of Princess Mononoke or even The Gold Rush, which partly inspired the character of Zora.
Not to mention those women called Kate Bush or Sternberg (like the director of The Blue Angel), or those guns that bear the names of luxury brands. Unsurprisingly, for those who follow the work of Bertrand Mandico, the latter offers us a new Unidentified Filmic Object (OFNI), by turns destabilizing and fascinating, in which we meet regulars of his cinema (Vimala Pons, Pauline Lorillard , Elina Löwensohn) and discovered Paula Luna.
A feature film that can also be seen as the second part of a triptych: “I have had the feeling recently that I am doing a trilogy”explains Bertrand Mandico in the press kit. “The Wild Boys would be Heaven, After Blue would be Purgatory. And Hell would be Conan the Barbarian.” Either the female reinterpretation of Robert E. Howard’s novel that gave birth to the classic fantasy with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and about which we do not know much. Except that the shots for this project, which will combine theater and cinema, have been completed.
“Feminine worlds and demonic figures bring them together”he adds about his films. “As such, but only as such, After Blue is the second feature film in a trilogy.” And to see at the cinema since February 16.