«Mandy», psychotic and psychedelic

Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival - Jonas Follonier

Swiss premiere at the eighteenth edition of the NIFFF (Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival), Mandy is the second feature film from director George P. Cosmatos. It features a happy, but already strange, couple living in a wooden house in the middle of a forest: Red, an endearing young man (played by the excellent Nicolas Cage) and Mandy, a daydreaming woman (played by Andrea Riseborough). Think she's a bit «hippy», a bit «spiritual»? You ain't seen nothing yet. Because the Jesus freaks who suddenly turn up in this reclusive place and burn Mandy alive before her partner's eyes are of a completely different kind.

A psychedelic aesthetic

The film opens with a delightful introduction, carried along by a rock instrumental that's very much to the point. soft and a moving aerial view over a forest, the motif par excellence of horror films. But this is not a horror film. Mandy, is a totally experimental project. borderline, which is based above all on a particular aesthetic. Red colors, dark lighting, slow motion, Black Sabbath atmosphere, reveries and hallucinations, pink-floydian music by Jóhann Jóhannsson (already the name...!), Mandy is psychedelic from start to finish.

This off-brand form results in a film that misses the mark. While the atmosphere may be interesting, albeit disgusting in itself with its saturated electric guitars and reverberating vocals, the plot takes the cake. Mandy doesn't give you chills, but disgust. Perhaps some will find pleasure in it. After all, there's Baudelaire. Nevertheless, even the blood seems parodic in this tale of revenge, which can be watched as a comedy.

Mystic versus psychotic

There is still one important element to salvage: if Mandy is a revenge film, but that's more its pretext than its purpose. The real theme of this film is drugs and fanaticism. The film's over-the-top psychedelic aesthetic comes into its own. The sect made up of the story's «bad guys» is portrayed in such an excessive manner that it forever removes the slightest desire to take LSD or join a congregation, even if we had such a foolish idea. Mandy, is to highlight the unsuspected dangers of the hippie movement and the shady movements it has spawned.

In this way, the film may invite us to adopt a posture of absolute distrust towards the trivialization of drugs and spiritualism in our time. But you can't lump everything together, I'm told. The psychotic drowns where the mythical swims« is a beautiful line from the end of the film. The same dark water connects them, and going from swimming to drowning is an ever-present risk.

The same danger lurks in this film: with its visual and auditory delirium, Mandy is likely to disgust us not only with hallucinogenic psychotropics and irrational beliefs, but also with cinema. You be the judge, this Thursday July 12 at NIFFF.

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Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © NIFFF