Conan The Barbarian has always been viewed as a guy. Robert E. Howard wrote the character to be the ultimate man in the 1930s. The covers of the paperback books had him painted as a muscular demi-god. Ultimately Conan was played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in two blockbuster films. After 90 years, French filmmaker Bertrand Mandico transformed the character into a female. What would happen if the child who watched their parent die was not only a girl, but the Barbarians who kidnapped her were also women? Besides changing up the spelling of Conan, Mandico threw out the action film conventionality to create She Is Conann.
An old woman wakes up in the afterlife where a part dog person Rainer (Seinfeld & Amateur‘s Elina Löwensohn) greets her. Using the supernatural memories of the Queen, she guides the woman through the story of the Barbarian female warrior Conann. As a young girl (Claire Duburcq), Conann witnesses her mother slaughtered and is enslaved by female barbarians. She rises up to become feared. Instead of merely “growing up” on screen, the young Conann meets her 25-year-old self (Christa Théret). They don’t tag team to take the narrative further. The older version has to sacrifice her younger self. She poses with the corpse while Rainer snaps away with her camera. Later she discovers her ultimate love in Sanja (Julia Riedler), a play on Red Sonja. Before they can do much, Conann goes through a growth spurt that turns her into a 35-year-old version (Sandra Parfait). The new version goes from being a barbarian to a movie stuntwoman in the Bronx. This is not part of Howard’s original short stories. Turing 45 gets rather rough with Conann (Agata Buzek) graduating into a leather clad military officer known for her barbarity. Conann’s final transformation at 55 (Irma Vep‘s Nathalie Richard) has her offering up a bizarre banquet to her art world friends.
This is not an attempt to make a rip-off follow up to Conan The Destroyer without dealing with copyrights – like when the Emanuelle movies came out after Emmanuelle was a sensation. This is more than Conan with women instead of Arnold in the lead. She Is Conann is arthouse epic that uses the origins of Conan as a launching point to explore barbaric elements of life. There is an attitude in the movie that reminds me of the literary work of Kathy Acker. If Kathy Acker was still around, would she have attempted her own version of Conan The Barbarian? She had rewritten another legendary hero with Don Quixote. The novel also featured a talking dog as the hero’s sidekick. Maybe she is a spiritual influence to the film. There are no real hints although a diner sign in the Bronx reads “Naked Lunch” after the William S. Burroughs’ novel.
She Is Conann is a remarkable cinematic feat of transformation. There’s as much gore and bloodshed as found in barbarian film yet we get the arthouse edge to the swords. Bertrand Mandico carries on the traditions found in the works of Peter Greenaway and Derek Jarman while giving us the flavor of John Milius. The final act takes an already outrageous film and finds the next level of grotesque imagery. She Is Conann is worthy to be a part of the Conan Canon.
The Video is 2.35:1 anamorphic. The 1080p transfer brings out the details in the film that flips between Black & White and color. The Audio is French DTS-HD 5.1. There’s a lot happening in the mix. The movie is subtitled in English and Spanish.
The Show Has Already Started (7:46) is an odd TV short that features his cast members dancing and the director made up as a large puppet.
Rainer, A Vicious Dog In Skull Valley (26:06) is supposed to be someone trying to explain the She Is Conann movie using the cast. Rainer is presented as a time travelling fashion photographer. At this point the character’s name is spelled Conan.
We Barbarians (27:16) has something go wrong on the set of She Is Conann for the car stunt.
The Last Cartoon – Nonsense, Optimism, Pessimistic (9:16) is a mix of animation and actors. It’s very French.
Trailer (1:37) shows off the time and gender shifting tale of Conann.
Trailers for The People’s Joker, The Wild Boys, After Blue (Dirty Paradise) and The Strangler.
Altered Innocence presents She Is Conann. Directed by Bertrand Mandico. Screenplay by Bertrand Mandico. Starring Elina Löwensohn, Christa Théret, Julia Riedler, Julia Riedler, Claire Duburcq, Sandra Parfait, Agata Buzek, Nathalie Richard, Françoise Brion & Audrey Bonnet. Running Time: 105 Minutes. Rating: Unrated. Release Date: May 7, 2024.
