SHE IS CONANN, original title CONANN, is the recently-released-on-disc third film from French director Bertrand Mandico. I previously reviewed and loved his second film AFTER BLUE (DIRTY PARADISE), which I described as being a little bit like if Alejandro Jodorowsky made BARBARELLA. This one is sort of Mandico’s take on Robert E. Howard’s Conan. Very sort of. But the Jodorowsky comparison is even stronger here – it reminded me of the full range from FANDO Y LIS to HOLY MOUNTAIN. This is a crazy one.

Some (including Wikipedia) have described CONANN as “a feminist take on CONAN THE BARBARIAN,” which honestly sounds wonderful, but I don’t think it’s very accurate. Though obviously alluding to the famous barbarian, I don’t see how you can possibly take it as an adaptation of those stories or a genuine attempt at participating in the sword and sorcery genre. It merely brushes against some of that iconography as it leaps out into the cosmos. I laughed when I saw the angry IMDb user reviews – one was titled “Content Fails to Connect to Source material” – because obviously they went in expecting something from the title and couldn’t adjust their take when it turned out it was something else. But I’m not one to talk. I was pretty annoyed at Jean-Luc Godard using Richard Stark’s The Jugger as the supposed basis of MADE IN U.S.A.

In an interview for something called Make it Weird Mandico said, “I didn’t adapt the books, I re-read them, kept the original trauma of the killed mother and the idea of the barbarian slave’s revenge. Through my research, I was able to go back to the original Conann, the one from Celtic mythology, written with ‘NN’, the spelling I kept for the film. He is a conqueror who spent time with fantastic creatures called Fomorians, described as demons, or rather cynocephalic demigods, with dog or hyena heads.”

The movie depicts the character of Conann at ages 15, 24, 35 and 45, each played by a different actor, and sometimes interacting with each other. We see her in Hell, in ancient times, in a 20th century war, in 1998 New York City. In each vignette she’s followed by Rainer, a dog-faced fashion/war photographer played by Mandico’s frequent star Elina Löwensohn. Rainer is supposed to be a demon who envies Conann, and is modeled after Mandico’s hero Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He’s said to be male, though Löwensohn doesn’t really play him that way (Mandico casts his movies almost entirely with women).

CONANN grew out of a theater piece that got cancelled but filmed (not yet released), then inspired Mandico to make two related short films, one in virtual reality. These facts help illustrate that it’s weird, but also that it came out of much thought and preparation. Sometimes Conann has huge bat wings, sometimes she’s in color, but usually in black and white. Always it looks stunning, though I kinda hate looking at that dog makeup (well done, but ugly). There’s lots of snow, glitter, glowing eyes, face paint, furs, swords. Though reportedly done on a modest budget, it’s a movie of elaborate props, costumes and sets built on soundstages in an old steel mill, and shot on film. It seems like a large-scale international art movie, a real spectacle.

To me the last vignette is the most interesting, though it’s deeply repulsive. Conann in this life is rich and famous, but she’s tired of living forever and comes up with a way to end it al. She invites a group of artists to her home, announces that she’s being euthanized and has hired top of the line chefs to turn her corpse into a delicious meal. And she has willed all of her estate to be split between the artists provided they eat all of her. This way she will live on through their works.

AFTER BLUE also had some pretentious artist characters, but that was on an alien planet. Here they’re more specific parodies of different types of hipsters, and the descriptions of their works are really funny – one of them is a “witch dancer,” for example.

The preparation of Conann’s corpse into food doesn’t look realistic per se, but it’s very graphic and disgusting. She has a little curtain around her neck to block her view so she can remain conscious while they slice her open. Then there’s alot of detailed dialogue about how each of the body parts is cooked as the artists attempt to consume all of it, even hair and bones.

The symbolism’s pretty heavy-handed, but too accurate for it not to burn like acid splashed on your skin. They have this opportunity to have all their art funded, no conditions, no compromises. But to get that they have to accept money from an actual barbarian, a mass killer, a force of evil. I think about this sort of thing alot. Even a nobody indie hobbyist type artist like me is dependent on the technology of straight up evil corporations to disseminate my work. It’s a conundrum. I have no idea if Mandico sees his allegory as a jab at others or a self-criticism, but it cuts deep either way.

Of the two Mandico movies I’ve seen so far I prefer AFTER BLUE for the specific reason that all its glittery sexy weirdness vibrates roughly along the path of a traditional story structure – a revenge western. For all its tangents and indulgences, it always feels like it has a direction to go in, because we have our two main characters with a specific goal of finding and killing Kate Bush (long story). CONANN also springboards off of genre elements, but with this more abstract notion of showing the different facets of a character through different actors and time periods – to me it feels more aimless, a series of bizarre incidents and amazing images that will go on for some time until it ends.

But it’s an even bigger and more visually ambitious movie, exploring not just one world but many, so I definitely think for some people this will be the better one. I also wouldn’t rule out the possibility of it clicking much more with me if I ever watch it a second time. It’s certainly unlike what any other filmmakers I know of are up to these days. Of course, that won’t stop me from hoping they hire some hack to do a DTV sequel like this was THE SCORPION KING. But look how beautiful this looks: