‘After Blue’ is the Hair-Elevating Sci-Fi Acid Western of your Goals

A melange of glitter, spores, and sand swirls alongside the coast. A gaggle of younger ladies carrying wool hairshirts picks their means by way of the tan stalagmites that dot the seaside. The downcast face of considered one of their quantity spots one thing within the dunes. A rotting head — or so it could appear — adorned with a crown of seaweed. The ladies attempt to take away the pinnacle, however because it blinks skyward. There’s a complete physique beneath there.

Whereas the others abandon the thriller to frolic within the waves, Roxy (Paula Luna) hangs again, enchanted by the piercing blue eyes gazing up at her. The girl (Agata Buzek), says she’ll grant three needs if Roxy frees her. A jinn’s promise. What might presumably go flawed? Roxy begins to dig, and Katarzyna Buszowska emerges, alias: Kate Bush. Roxy doesn’t understand it but, however she has freed the boogeyman: a murderess condemned to be swallowed by the ocean. Because the blood of Roxy’s pals mingles with the lapping seafoam, she sits in shock: what has she accomplished?

From its inciting incident, After Blue (Soiled Paradise) is upfront and unapologetic about its polymorphous method to style. This can be a Queer-Sci-fi-Fantasy-Acid-Western. Whereas that string of phrases may smack of phrase salad, it’s to writer-director Bertrand Mandico’s credit score that every one the puzzle items match collectively so naturally. Eco-feminism, frontier myth-making, lesbian want, and psychedelia are worthy bedfellows, it seems.

After Blue takes place within the wake of an unspecified local weather disaster. By some accident, we’ve discovered a brand new residence: After Blue, a bluntly-named alternative for the water-logged planet we took as a right. Within the movie’s manufacturing notes, Mandico clarifies that the movie’s subtitle — (Soiled Paradise) — is just not a judgment on the wildness of After Blue however a stark inevitability of colonialism. Human beings tend to doom unsullied land with our very presence, nevertheless well-intentioned. And the residents of After Blue are making an attempt, as greatest they’ll, to keep away from humanity’s previous errors. There is no such thing as a globalization or know-how. They lower any trace of evil out on the root. Oh, proper, and there are not any males. Let me clarify:

When humanity arrived on After Blue, it encountered a germ within the planet’s ambiance that proved lethal to these assigned male at delivery. Solely AFAB people are able to co-existing with the virus’ unusual potential to speed up rogue hair progress. And so, on this intergalactic frontier with a strictly female edge, Roxy and her mom, Zora (Elina Löwensohn), change into exiles. They could return on one situation: with the lifeless corpse of Kate Bush.

The glue holding After Blue’s varied items in place is that it’s, in the end, a coming-of-age story. Roxy should work out who she is, what she needs, and who she needs on this harmful and delightful world. Newcomer Paula Luna endows the bleached-blonde teen with a reckless curiosity and an earnestness that each will get her in bother, alienates her from her mom, and in the end permits her to carve out her personal house on After Blue. She smokes writhing silkworms beneath the floorboards. She finds herself concurrently terrified and mesmerized by the lady she’s been tasked with killing. And he or she even falls in love with an android (Michaël Erpelding) possessing tendril-like genitalia, the closest factor she’s come to seeing a “real-life” man.

For those who swoon over in-camera optical results and enthusiastically tactile mise-en-scene, After Blue’s two-hour runtime will wiz proper by. Visually, Mandico and firm have cross-pollinated the dreamy cinematic fantasies of Jean Cocteau, the anachronistic eye of Man Maddin, and a sprinkling of the fleshy abandon of Fellini’s Satyricon. Shot in 35mm and devoid of CGI, After Blue is the type of movie you may attain out and contact; plentiful like a field of mould and pulsing with subterranean gasoline pockets and untold quantities of slime. For its half, Pierre Desprats‘ sultry, alien rating is a marvel to behold. By some means this man put disco and Ennio Morricone twangs in a blender, and we’ll be without end in his debt.

After Blue is keenly (and profitable) in aligning itself with the Western-Noir custom of questioning, rejecting, and in any other case subverting the Conventional Western’s obsession with frontier justice and lone heroism. Each Zora and Roxy are vocal pacifists who’ve little interest in their village’s quest for vengeance. They will barely shoot straight, not to mention wrap their heads round taking a life. It’s refreshing on this age of “all the pieces is a Western” to see a movie that has each accomplished its homework (Warren Beatty’s fur coat from McCabe & Mrs. Miller would go well with Zora properly) whereas additionally making an effort to deliver one thing new to the desk (a.ok.a. sapphic, intergalactic El Topo).

Confession: after I first noticed After Blue means again in TIFF’s 2021 Midnight Insanity block, one thing concerning the setup’s organic method to intercourse set off my (“wait, is that this gender vital?” alarm). In the end After Blue‘s enthusiasm for defying binaries ought to guarantee us that that’s not what’s happening. (It’s price noting that the movie options the non-binary artist Franky Gogo. Besides: Mandico addressed the matter immediately in Xtra Journal, calling organic determinism “an abhorrent idea that turns my abdomen.” Hopefully, that clears all the pieces up).

After Blue (Soiled Paradise) is totally not a movie for everybody. Its cultural interlocutors are huge (Barbarella and Orpheus? In this financial system?). And the movie’s pitiless embrace of the sexual, the sensual, and past (!) shall be a barrier for many. That mentioned, freaks rejoice: it is a gem you’re not going to need to miss.

After Blue (Soiled Paradise) is now out there on VOD by way of AppleTV, Amazon, GooglePlay, Vudu, and Vimeo in North America.

Associated Matters: LGBTQ, Science Fiction, Westerns

Meg Shields is the standard farm boy of your goals and a senior contributor at Movie College Rejects. She presently runs three columns at FSR: The Queue, How’d They Do That?, and Horrorscope. She can also be a curator for One Excellent Shot and a contract author for rent. Meg may be discovered screaming about John Boorman’s ‘Excalibur’ on Twitter right here: @TheWorstNun. (She/Her).