After Blue (Dirty Paradise)(After Blue (Paradis sale))

Paste Magazine by

To its credit, After Blue is very easy on the eyes, reminiscent of the kitschy, saturated pulp mags Mandico is clearly borrowing from. But its illusory schtick is better suited for a short film, rather than being taffy-pulled into a feature with so many sugary gaps in logic and feeling. You’re better off taking an edible and pressing play on Hounds of Love.

The New York Times by Elisabeth Vincentelli

It’s unclear what Mandico is trying to say, if anything, and the film overstays its welcome — even the wildest visuals lose their power to stun after a while — but “After Blue” certainly is sui generis.

Screen Rant by Ferdosa Abdi

To enjoy After Blue, one should be open to an experience that overtakes the senses. Despite the long runtime, it offers a wholly unique experience.

TheWrap by Fran Hoepfner

For all its provocations, After Blue (Dirty Paradise) is rote and tedious. The body horror and gross-outs get repetitive, and none of it ever means much of anything.

Austin Chronicle by Josh Kupecki

A sapphic blending of Westerns and mythology (Boorman via Cocteau?) shot through a filter of Seventies sci-fi paperback covers, After Blue is the second proper feature from French experimental filmmaker Bertrand Mandico – although his output of shorts is abundant – following 2017’s The Wild Boys.

IndieWire by Jude Dry

A kaleidoscopic fantasy warped through the lens of a 1970s sci-fi Western, After Blue is a synthetic siren song for the freaks of the future and the past.

RogerEbert.com by Katie Rife

After Blue advertises itself as a sci-fi/fantasy epic, and although it’s a long and complicated story with many elaborate settings, it ends up feeling small and inconsequential by the end.

Variety by Peter Debruge

Though its weak bounty-hunter plot makes almost no sense, After Blue satisfies that thirsty spot in our psyche too few films succeed in tickling, where dreams are born, hormones churn and logic simply doesn’t apply.

Movie Nation by Roger Moore

The pointlessness is the point, and there’s zero entertainment value in that, no matter how many critics throw up their hands and use “fever dream” as a reason to cop out, give it a thumb’s up, and move on.