After Blue (Paradis sale)

On a planet in a distant galaxy, colonized by women when the Earth got sick, Roxy (aka Toxic), rescues Katarzyna Buszowska (aka Kate Bush), who has been buried up to her neck in sand to await death by the incoming tide. Roxy's merciful act unleashes a tide of misfortune on her friends, as Kate Bush turns out to be a killer. The village's coven of elders therefore order Roxy (Paula-Luna Breitenfelder) and her hairdresser mother Zora (Elina Löwensohn) to pursue and kill Kate Bush, a task that takes them into sci-fi western territory, as they ride off with designer weapons on an amateurish bounty hunt that turns out to be a sexual and spiritual odyssey for them both.

Nothing could have prepared them, or the viewer, for what they encounter as they travel inland - hallucinogenic caterpillars, giant fungi, monstrous creatures of various sorts, and a pretentious artist called Sternberg (Vimala Pons) with her male android partner. Director Bertrand Mandico overwhelms the viewer with a torrent of bizarre imaginings - the lesbian jacuzzi session that takes place in the entrails of a recently deceased antediluvian creature isn't the half of it.

The living planet with its sexualized flora is a field day for Freudians, and the film is obviously saying something about female liberation from the patriarchy, though exactly what is anyone's guess. Is it indeed a dirty paradise, or a world just as violent as the male-dominated Earth was? This is a true work of surrealism, from which you can take any message you can find, or none. Kate Bush has a third eye (no spoilers here, but it's not in her forehead) and we are invited to have our own spiritual awakening, not though being preached at, but by allowing this seductive stream of weirdness to float us out of normality.

Although the film never runs out of ideas, I found the two hours plus running time overlong. The plot is confusing, though arguably that's the point of it. If you want something different, After Blue certainly delivers: it's so bonkers it's beyond good or bad, and it is difficult to think of another film like this one. Perhaps if Tarkovsky had directed Barbarella it would have been something like this.

In principle, I am very fond of films that don't look or behave like other films. On that basis, this film scores very highly indeed.

Lots of inventiveness in the scene-setting, lights and costumes disguise what was probably a fairly limited budget but (like the films of Anna Biller) this carries through into a singular vision. The plot could have been a bit more substantial perhaps, but the increasingly frequent mentions of "Kate Bush" (officially Katarzyna Buszowska) are very entertaining - and I wondered whether the cast had trouble keeping straight faces having to say that all the time...?

In any case, if you make it through to the end, there is some sort of resolution to the quest that had me in mind of the great "Singing Ringing Tree", in that I really didn't ask too many questions, just went along for the ride - just like I did 55 years ago with the latter...

Recommended, if you like that sort of thing.

OK, this movie shouldn't be watched like a 'normal' movie. It should simply be watched for what it is, namely a piece of art. The scenario, who gives a damn. In most movies I do give a damn, but not in this one. Bertrand Mandico makes it quite clear you shouldn't. I read in another review that one should just let him/herself be immersed in the strange and wondrous universe created by this movie. That hits the nail.

It's a visual masterpiece, full of colours and art. The weirdness of the encounters just makes you laugh. I definitely need to rewatch this on acid.

I especially love the western kind of feeling to it.

This is truly something, instant cult!

After Blue is a world in a different galaxy, with only women. All men are dead. We meet Roxy walking along a beach, taunted by three women who don't like her, and refer to her as Toxic. They come across a head in the sand, which is actually a person buried up to her neck. The three tell her to leave her buried, but she digs her out, and is granted three wishes. She wishes the three would leave her alone, and the woman, Kate Bush, kills them. (Monkey's Paw, anyone?) Her mother, along with her, are sent on a quest. Along the way, others join, and they have weapons. The weapons have names: Chanel, Guicci, Paul Smith and Louis Vuitton. The movie is French, is surreal, so one immerses into the visual aspects, the coloration, the tints, the goo, the fog, the overlaid layers, and one will either appreciate it for art, or consider it garbage. Each person who makes it through the entire movie will likely have a different take on what it is about. The sets are really what makes the movie, as they are strange and really outer worldly.

So strange that this film names a character after the musician, Kate Bush. It's hard to stay immersed in the film, when every mention of the character makes you think of the musician with the same name. It's so jarring.

This film does feel like it has been influenced to some extent by the film, Barbarella (1968). In that film, the character Durand-Durand (sic) inspired the band name of Duran Duran. So perhaps "Kate Bush" is used as the name of a character in this film, to provide some sort of symmetry?

To the extent that there is a story here ("unearthing some old Kate Bush"), perhaps the moral of the story is that all vinyl fans should play Kate Bush's A side and then turn her over and play her B side?