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. (read the rest of this shit…)
There’s this weird French filmmaker, Bertrand Mandico. He has a new movie I’ve seen people raving about called SHE IS CONANN. When I read about it, I realized that over the last few years I’ve read about two other movies of his that also sounded really intriguing. So I decided to finally try one.
