She is Conann, the latest outing from experimental French film director Bertrand Mandico (The Wild Boys, After Blue), premiered in competition for the Queer Palm at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Billed as a queer feminist take on Conan the Barbarian, the film draws on influences from The Holy Mountain to Excalibur to Hedwig and the Angry Inch, showcasing a gloriously absorbing world steeped in an eighties fantasy aesthetic.
Fuzzily lensed like some sort of psychedelic nightmare, the film flashes back and forth between black and white and shocking moments of technicolour, showcasing triumphant work from production designer Anna Le Mouël (Saint Omer) and costume designer Elise Cribier-Delande (Magdala). I could write an entire article on the wild assortment of body armour alone, but I digress.
Framed as a mad trip down memory lane, hellhound Rainer (the memorable Elina Löwensohn) serves as narrator and guide through the many lives of the legendary barbarian queen Conann, popping flashbulbs like a devoted paparazzo along the way. Six different actresses portray Conann in various significant phases of her life (Claire Duburcq, Christa Theret, Sandra Parfait, Agata Buzek, Nathalie Richard, Françoise Brion). Each performer brings completely distinct qualities to the role, reflecting the many selves that exist in Conann, with each new incarnation subsuming the previous iteration. Quite literally in fact. As each version of the barbarian queen meets her future self, she is killed, moulted to make way for her more evolved incarnation.
Rainer’s journey starts off with an innocent young girl of just fifteen, somehow more awed than afraid of the brutal Barbarian horde she encounters as they sack her village. Taking the young Conann as a slave, their leader – the beautiful and ruthless Sanja (Julia Riedler) – forces her to eat the still beating heart of her own mother in exchange for her life. It is with Sanja and her horde that Conann develops a taste for blood, and discovers a talent for inflicting pain. Rainer confides a prophecy: Conann will become the most barbaric of the barbarians and Sanja will die by her vengeful hand.
Certainly not for the faint of heart, the film has no shortage of gore. Skulls burn and blood flows freely through clouds of glittering dust as our heroine slices and dices her way to the top of underworld. As the younger Conann gives way to her older counterparts, she and Sanja fall in love, and are granted a kind of extended hedonistic holiday in a surreal version of the Bronx. It is here that she fulfills her destiny, taking Sanja’s life and taking on her most sadistic and nihilistic identity of all, littering the underworld with corpses and killing anything and anyone that gets attached to her. Eventually growing bored of this life, she takes on her final living incarnation: patroness of the arts.
The film’s final act offers perhaps its most gruesome indictment. Conann, having reached the pinnacle of her life, has decided to end it on her own terms. Staging a sort of demented dinner party as Rainer questions her sanity, she has invited a group of expert chefs to prepare a perverted omakase from her body while she remains conscious for the procedure.
She has earmarked a group of six artists (with fittingly over the top monikers like Zuricha Demain and Uma Porn) to inherit her massive fortune on one condition: they consume her cadaver in its entirety. Quickly setting aside any moral objections, all save for one tuck right in. Powering through their benefactor’s body they are treated to precious treasures hidden amongst her organs, and in a final disgusting tableau, congratulate themselves on their cannibalistic last supper. Mandico, of course, has one last surprise in store, but I won’t spoil it.
Theatrical through and through, and packed with haunting imagery that stays with you long after the credits have rolled, She is Conann packs a memorable and stylish punch. Despite occasionally turning a very male gaze on this feminist fable, Mandico is a director of singular vision, and with this film he has crafted a visceral tale of feminine ferocity, destined to become a cult classic.
She is Conann will be available to stream on demand from May 7th.
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