Photosensitivity Warning: There are multiple scenes in which either a character is using a camera with flash or a strobe is used (often at length). Proceed with absolute caution.
In the realm of action fantasy, John Milius’s 1982 sword and sorcery film Conan the Barbarian is considered among the most favored. The film featured a young Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan, a character originally created by Robert E. Howard in 1932, and dazzled audiences with its tale of barbarism and revenge. Even now, some 42 years later, as talks of an aged Conan battling new enemies renew amid the Arrow Video first-time 4K UHD edition of the two Conan films, the story of Conan continues to be passed down from one generation of audiences to another. Barbarian, though, is not just a tale of blood and boobs, but of survival. With this in mind, writer/director Bertrand Mandico (After Blue (Dirty Paradise)) borrows the idea of Conan to explore concepts of violence, survival, war, and love via the film She Is Conann. After hitting select theaters in February 2023, She Is Conann arrives at home via distributor Altered Innocence’s new deal with MVD Entertainment Group, bringing with it blood, gore, and three Mandico shorts films.
Claire Duburcq as Conann in Bertrand Mandico’s SHE IS CONANN. Photo courtesy of Altered Innocence.
In an unknown time and place, a woman (Françoise Brion) arrives with no memory. Aided by a demon, Rainer (Elina Löwensohn), the woman is brought before the Queen of Hell who shares various tales of barbarism, each from a different life that the woman experienced on Earth. Across each life, blood and violence occur where she strides, leading to a confrontation of what’s best in life and the albatross that is holding on to old ideas.
Christa Théret as Conann in Bertrand Mandico’s SHE IS CONANN. Photo courtesy of Altered Innocence.
To describe She Is Conann as a gender-bending of the Howard character would be entirely reductive and a misrepresentation of what Mandico both seeks to do and accomplishes. Especially as too few are willing to acknowledge that the audiences of 1982 are not the same as now, nor are the values, to simply accuse She Is Conann of seeking to co-opt a character for a different purpose rather than creating something original is its own kind of blind villainy and barbarism. To assert, with no proof, that Conann is merely reproducing, or, worse, little more than transfiguring the established testosteroned male fantasy figure into a female version, implies a lack of creativity and imagination on the part of those who make such declarations without watching a single frame of Mandico’s work. Conann is not Milius’s film made in the present with a sapphic bend any more than Brion represents Schwarzenegger. Rather, Conann is a work that utilizes the *idea* of Conan, specifically the kind of world that requires vicious cruelty to forge a deadly warrior, as a shorthand to examine violence as a way of life and the emptiness that inevitability follows no matter how many bodies you cut down.
“Killing one’s youth is the pinnacle of barbarism.”
This being the second Mandico feature this reviewer has screened, it’s clear that the filmmaker has a specific visual style, something that leans into sci-fi fantasy with a modern art approach that isn’t afraid to get nasty. In the opening sequence wherein we meet the woman and Rainer, the world is in technicolor with one set being a little antiseptic, appropriate for the shiny wrap placed around the confused woman and the two nurses that are standing by Rainer upon our introduction to them. It’s not until Rainer guides the woman to the Queen that more fantastical elements trickle in, creating the first steps of the bridge between fantasy and the phantasmagorical, a bridge that the audience crosses with the woman as she regains her memory through each life relived. What’s key here is that the starting point for the woman, when Conann was 15 (played by After Blue (Dirty Paradise)’s Claire Duburcq), blends seamlessly as we witness the symbolic birth of Conann into a world of butchers where the meek are meat. The backstory is an interesting play on Conan’s, trading Conan’s forger for a healer, but the sacrifice of parenthood so that the child may survive is unique, specifically in that Mandico trades the metaphor for the literal, Conann forced to consume her mother before being allowed to live as a servant to the barbarians who killed her mother. It’s here that the concept of consummation begins, a grotesque bit of barbarism whose capturing in black-and-white saves the more sensitive audiences members from disquiet by the gory scenario. Yet, Mandico doesn’t allow us to look away, moving into close-ups so that we can see lips moving, teeth pulling at an organ, to ensure that this forced transformation goes honored and recognized by us, as well as by the barbarians who make her do so. It’s fascinating, then, that the film ends with a different sort of consummation, with choice being placed before those who eat, greed being the ruler that drives the hungry, exhaustion the driver for the meal itself. Either way, the metaphorical concept of the dead living on within the consumer holds, Mandico shifting the notion ever so slightly from generations living on in their progeny to something more akin to the sins of our mothers living on within us as long as we hold to the principles and ideals that enslaved a populace. Conann is a barbarian, after all, in any incarnation, and one doesn’t take that title by asking nicely.
L-R: Julia Riedler as Sanja La Rouge and Sandra Parfait as Conann in Bertrand Mandico’s SHE IS CONANN. Photo courtesy of Altered Innocence.
This physical release is the first in the partnership between Altered Innocence and MVD Entertainment Group as Altered Innocence shifts from their deal with other boutique distributor Vinegar Syndrome. This is mentioned because (1) the two had been working together for some time and that should be acknowledged and (2) the materials included with this release may differ slightly from what was previously expected. The MVD-sold edition does not include a slipcover and there’s no essay booklet or other form of physical material: just the disc in a clear plastic disc case so that we can see an image of the film (specifically a close-up of Duburcq in a cage), while the original poster art featuring Christa Théret (as Conann, age 25) is on the cover. For on-disc bonus materials, there are four trailers for other Altered Innocence releases (some in theaters, some on home video), a theatrical trailer for She Is Conann, and three short films with the overall title: The Show Has Already Started Short Film Program. Two shorts run just shy of 30 minutes (Rainer, A Vicious Dog in Skull Valley and We Barbarians), while the third (The Last Cartoon — Nonsense, Optimistic, Pessimistic) is less than 10 minutes. If one didn’t watch them, it would be difficult to know that the first two films are loosely tied to Conann as both characters, concepts, and a bit of wall-breaking occurs as these Mandico shorts frolic in the playground ahead of the full feature that buyers seek to (re)experience.
L-R: Françoise Brion as Conann and Elina Löwensohn as Rainer in Bertrand Mandico’s SHE IS CONANN. Photo courtesy of Altered Innocence.
You don’t have to have entrenched yourself in Howard’s world of warriors and wizards in order to embrace She Is Conann. Though, “embrace” isn’t quite the right word as to do so puts one in harm’s way of either being impaled by the metal hooks that protrude preternaturally from her nipples (an intimate injury), crushed by high-octane metal, or the kind of sword swallowing that tears apart your insides with a single thrust of the blade. There is no real gentleness, only fear and pain — but also a lesson that living such a life comes at incredible cost, and often one so deeply personal that amnesia feels like pity so as not to remember all the people that one’s slaughtered in order to remain alive, including themselves. Devoid of the mostly harmless entertainment that are the Schwarzenegger tales, Mandico’s She Is Conann will prompt you to reconsider the ways in which you embrace violence, asking you to sit with the discomfort you find in the process.
She Is Conann Special Features:
- Rainer, A Vicious Dog in Skull Valley (26 min short film)
- We Barbarians (27 min short film)
- The Last Cartoon – Nonsense, Optimistic, Pessimistic (8 min short film)
- DTS-HD 5.1 Surround Master Audio
- French, English, & German language options with optional English & Spanish Subtitles
- Theatrical Trailer (1:37)
- Four (4) Altered Innocence Production Trailers
Available on Blu-ray and DVD May 7th, 2024.
For more information, head to the official Altered Innocence She Is Conann webpage.
To purchase, head to the official MVD Entertainment Group She Is Conann webpage.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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Categories: Films To Watch, Home Release, Home Video, Recommendation, Reviews
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