The Beast (La bestia)

Director Bertrand Bonello's "The Beast" is not for the faint of heart. It's daring, divergent, disorienting, occasionally bombastic and frustrating - in short, very French. Voila, mes amis!

The film is based, loosely, on Henry James' 1903 novella "The Beast in the Jungle." In this eighty-page short story, James suggests that the beast represents our own fear. James believed that personal fear causes an overwhelming sense of dread about the future accompanied by a sense of impending personal catastrophe, sensations that annihilate the possibility of fulfilling love with another.

In the opening scene, Gabriella (Léa Seydoux) is standing in front of a green screen receiving instructions from Bonello. It's the first clue that this film will be unconventional and surprising. Fair warning.

The film takes place at three different times. The story begins in Paris in 1910. Louis (a tremendous George MacKay - "1917") is in the process of wooing Gabrielle away from her attentive but uninteresting husband. There are also scenes in 2014 in Los Angeles. Gabrielle is a housesitting struggling actor/model. Lou is an incel psychopath who stalks her while spouting ominously about seeking "retribution." Finally, again in Paris, action takes place in 2044. In this dystopian future, AI has taken over the world, people must wear airtight masks to go outside and humans are strongly encouraged to engage in "purification," a process of purging DNA of past traumas and permanently deadening emotions. Bonello flashes forward and backward regularly. If you're feeling overwhelmed right now, it's probably because you're accurately processing how this story unfolds. To further complicate matters, Bonello shifts tone and content throughout the film - from period piece (1910) to thriller/horror film (2014) to dystopian sci-fi film (2044).

Bonello uses these three palettes, each shot in a distinctive cinematic style, to throw out some really weighty issues: that our sense of dread may be an accurate foreshadowing of the collapse of civilization, that deadening ourselves emotionally may be the most adaptive way to cope with the atrocities that occur around us continuously. For good measure, he plays with the juxtaposition of loneliness and love and scrutinizes the role of fate. If you crave a straightforward narrative or have low tolerance for ambiguity, now is a good time to run away screaming.

For you brave souls who accept the challenge, you'll be rewarded with a mesmerizing performance by Léa Seydoux, a close-up of hand-holding that's more sensual than most sex scenes plus images and ideas that will haunt you for days after the experience.

With RKO's horror films, Van Lewton, discovered a new cinematic terror, darkness, what you can't see. Now artificial intelligence, the metaverse, can create a reality that stalks you in an empty space, the invented reality, which can be an advertisement in which you end up hit by an invisible car or an acting test for a film in which you defend yourself with a knife from you really don't know what. Or it is a reality manufactured to satisfy our dreams, to erase misfortunes, to disguise that "other" reality in which our expectations are not met.

A world in which the objective is not to suffer, not to desire, to achieve an emotionally stabilized, more productive life, without error in decisions; a world where emotions are better left for dreams and that creates past lives tailored to your dreams, lives in which what goes wrong can always be eliminated, reworked into a better dream. A world in which the proof that you do not exist is that you have no digital footprint on the internet (well, this is no longer science fiction).

The protagonist is a pianist from the beginning of the 20th century who does not dare to abandon her husband and start a relationship with the man she has fallen in love with, because she has the feeling that a strange misfortune will destroy her or her lover if she does (again as in the RKO Cat People classic).

She is an aspiring actress model at the beginning of the 21st century, strangely incapable of maintaining the romantic relationship she needs, who makes a living taking care of other people's homes, just now a very luxurious one), in a world in which, once again, she finds herself, surprisingly, with the same man she always falls in love with, now another young man unable to dare to maintain a relationship.

Time and time again things seem to put love within reach, but for whatever reason, those realities end up being somewhat tricky, and readjust themselves until tragedy always arrives.

The protagonist is also (especially?) the young woman of a future with empty streets, advised by artificial intelligence, whose friends are robot dolls, and who wears virtual reality glasses. This young woman is dissatisfied with her job, unable to promote to a better one for being too human, and does not know whether to opt for an erasure of her past lives and eliminate traumatic experiences, at the risk of... ceasing to be herself. She is a young woman for whom that ataraxia is not really atractive, who does not want to renounce to imperfectly authentic emotions, and in that world of the future...there is that nightclub that dresses up in a different decade style every night, and where she surprisingly finds again the young man with whom she is obsessed.

La Bete is clearly indebted to the universe of David Lynch, especially Inland Empire and its matryoshka game (dolls within dolls, realities within realities), although now explained for all audiences and with a bath of conventionality, without the background, authenticity nor the infinite number of interpretations of Lynch (and certainly without his poetry), a safer and less authentically unsettling territory. We also get the awakening of Mulholland Drive, Roy Orbison's songs as in Blue Velvet, and even Laura Palmer's final scream.

There is also something of the existential terror of Blade Runner (or Do Androids dream of electric sheep?) and we could continue with many other borrowings.

But the truth is that these three hours fly by and keep you continually intrigued in a plot that never gets lost in ramblings and that likes to tie up all the ends. An intelligent science fiction film, with a very attractive and careful aesthetic, and which benefits from the magnificent performance of Léa Seydoux.

Beautiful costumes and stunning sets, amazing performance of the two main characters. An original and engaging screenplay that resonates with contemporary matters. A movie that raises intriguing questions about the evolution of technology and its role in modern society. Bonello appropriately explores the importance of emotions and affects : are they desirable or to be avoided at all costs ? This movie offers a captivating and enjoyable travel through time and ages, deserving to be appreciated at its right value. The only criticism I would offer is that I found it a bit lengthy towards the end, and, at times, it was difficult to follow and understand.

Dolls are made with neutral expressions to please everyone. Humans, with the help of Artificial Intelligence, may yet take after dolls.

In the future dominated by Artificial Intelligence, Gabrielle is encouraged to purge her character of negative emotions. She can do this by revisiting past lives in France (1904) and Los Angeles (2014), where she exhibited intense reactions. She is warned that at any time she will encounter a beast that intends to do her harm.

As Gabrielle navigates the past she encounters Louis in both places. Gabrielle is simultaneously fearful of Louis and in love with him. He has similar feelings about her. To trust one another Gabrielle and Louis need to bridge generations, cultures, and the depths of their own hearts. Either that or become human dolls.

The Beast is cerebral, intense, complex, and mystifying. While the film is abnormally long, there are scenes that quicken the pulse and make it seem like no time passes at all. The nonlinear plot construction and deep conversations of The Beast make it into a intricate puzzle that I am still trying to figure out. I'd like the film more if it didn't paint American males with such a broad and negative brush (but perhaps I don't like this aspect because it is so uncomfortably true). The film is growing in my appreciation, perhaps as I accept this truth. The Beast is loosely based on The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James and the character of a real person. I love the thought of revisiting past lives and exploring the question about whether intense emotions do more harm than good.

When David Ehrlich reviewed The Beast (org. French title La Bête), he made the case -- that the movie makes the case -- that we ought to demand every major arthouse director make "their own Cloud Atlas" before joining the choir invisible. That is a fair way to view Bertrand Bonello's recent opus - a languid sci-fi drama that, as far as I'm concerned, solidified the movie year of 2024 as worthy of '23. When seeking out strange and defiant new cinema, this is exactly the kind of mystifying journey on which I yearn to be taken.

In the film, we follow Lea Seydoux through what appears to be different time periods. In several of them, the construction of dolls is involved. In the past and present storylines, she encounters a man played by George MacKay; in the future, she seems to dream of all these moments while submerged in a dark substance. Are they real events on any level? Hey, don't look at me.

It is the sort of film that might easily turn some people off and seem inaccessible as I describe it. (Others have likened its atmosphere and dream logic to the works of Lynch and its unsettling view of love and sexuality to the works of Cronenberg.) But I assure you that the film as such is often quite funny, with MacKay portraying one of the most wince-inducingly accurate parodies of the Incel archetype we've ever seen on film -- his pathetic "I deserve girls" vlog is one of the highlights of the picture, although its similarities with the infamous Elliot Rodger rant will doubtless disturb some viewers.

If that's not doing it for you (understandable), the film also offers beautiful shot compositions, masterly lighting, and wicked satire of modern movie-making itself, chiefly the digitalization of it.

Also, I guess in one of the time periods or "realities" or whatever, Seydoux's character is an actress whose credits seem to include Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers. As it happens, we'll be talking more about Korine later -- along with a markedly less intelligent contemplation on modern/future cinema.