Barbarians, gore, glitter, time travel, humanoid hellhounds, toxic lesbians, and cannibalistic artists are some—but far from all—of the components in Bertrand Mandico’s avant-garde retelling of the Conan the Barbarian mythos. Like Mandico’s trippy sci-fi fantasy After Blue that disturbed Midnight Madness audiences in 2021, She Is Conann thrives on its own bizarre extravagance as it pushes the limits of substance and style.

Far removed from the hyper-masculine action-hero iconicism of the Conan story, She is Conann reimagines the legend’s barbarism as a century-spanning feminine epic, complete with an overabundance of battle-born gore, stomach-churning delicatessen, and a bewildering jump into the future where barbarians are wealth-crazed socialites. But beneath the surface of Mandico’s overindulgent visuals and the maddening tone, She Is Conann is a rather stylish film about the inevitability of regret and the inherent violence of love.

Filmed in black and white on 35mm, with splashes of emphatic technicolor, Mandico has created a film that feels as if it was brought to life in the 1970s, discovered on a VHS in a smoke-filled backroom in the 1980s, before being screened in some underground club in the 1990s. It feels scandalous, intimate, and wholly bizarre. Its micro-budget is not a curse, but rather a blessing—forcing everyone in the crew to find the most creative and unique ways to bring Mandico’s elevated vision to life. Glitter, lamé, fog machines, pools, and an overabundance of mannequins help to create a disturbing depiction of the barbaric underworld that forces audiences to watch and wait for the next visual treat. Mandico blends visual mediums seamlessly, transforming fragments into a trippy mix of film, photography, and the claustrophobia of black box theater.

Life Is an Undulating Snake in ‘She Is Conann’
Image via Fantastic Fest

Rainer (Elina Löwensohn) is the film’s most impressive visual feat, as the prosthetics disturb as much as they delight. Described as a “witness” to the events that take place in the film, Rainer feels like a bit of a self-insert for the director, especially as he bounds around pivotal moments snapping photographs and directing Conann through each phase of her life. He is self-serving, unrepentant, and an unreliable narrator in an unreliable world. Rainer and the barbarian Sanja (Julia Riedler) are the only constants in the film, as a rotating cast of Conanns age up and transform into entirely new people.

Conann’s journey starts as a teenager (Claire Duburcq) who is enslaved by the tyrannical Sanja. After witnessing her mother’s death and being forced to feast on her flesh, she is kept in cages, forced to grovel at Sanja’s feet and fight for survival—until the day she finally breaks free of her chains and kisses her way into adulthood (Christa Théret). Conann and Sanja’s relationship becomes something wholly different, though still tainted by this struggle for control and hierarchy, and it changes further (Sandra Parfait) when they drive into the future, where the Bronx becomes their new battlefield. These episodic flashbacks to Conann’s life are summoned by Rainer, as he goads the elder Queen Conann (Françoise Brion) into reflecting on her past as her time draws to a close.

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As Mandico transports audiences through the interweaving expanse of Conann’s troubled lifetime, he sprinkles in these profound and unnerving pieces of dialogue which are far above the actual level of storytelling employed by the film. The visual of life as an undulating snake mimics the segmented, episodic display of Conann’s life. Even cut up, beheaded, and feasted on by starving artists, hungry for more—Conann perseveres like a snake with its head cut off. The idea of death making someone blush, when dying steals the color from our flesh, is another mesmerizing idea that Mandico’s keen dialogue toys with, elevating every other aspect of the film.

While it is heralded as a retelling of the Conan mythos, Mandico uses it more as a base to explore this heightened tale of a woman processing grief in the most ungraceful ways imaginable. At nearly two hours long, it meanders near the mid-point where it feels the most self-aggrandizing and lost in the mires of its own ego. But even still, it manages to captivate—keeping audiences eager to see what new, grotesque horrors will be on display next. It’s difficult to label the film as a feminist retelling when the script and vision were born from a man who favors hypersexual visuals in his all-woman casts, but it does try to showcase the feminine existence with the same brutal, violent hand that paints the world of the masculine.

She Is Conann is not for the faint of heart, weak of stomach, or morally pious. It plays upon the most provocative ideas imaginable—pushing the boundaries of not only sexuality, gender, and self-image, but societal norms too. Mandico seems intent on refusing to find a true limit as he toes the line with passionate and deadly kisses between the past and present Conann, macabre foreplay with a revved-up car that might put Titane to shame, and the sexual frustrations of a hellish half-hound demon. Not to mention the cannibalism that bookends the film’s first and final acts, which is somehow less unnerving than everything in between.

Grade: B

The Big Picture

She Is Conann is an avant-garde retelling of the Conan the Barbarian mythos that delves into epic storytelling with gore, delicatessen, and a bizarre future setting. The film’s visuals and tone evoke a scandalous, intimate, and wholly bizarre atmosphere, reminiscent of underground cinema from the 1970s to the 1990s. Although the film explores themes of regret and the violence of love, it also pushes boundaries with provocative ideas about sexuality, gender, self-image, and societal norms. It is not for the faint of heart or morally pious.

She is Conann screened at the 2023 Fantastic Fest.