उपयोगकर्ता समीक्षाएं

It would be slightly unfair to assert that The Beast is a 20-minute story concept pulled from the rejection pile of Black Mirror plots, but given that it was loosely based on a 1903 novella from Henry James, it could be merely unfair to make such an assertion. We see past lives lived throughout imperfect days, slavishly assembled in three interleaved timelines, sometimes experienced within an alternative reality, while at other times merely through fictional narrative.

If one pays attention for all 145 minutes, and one would assuredly deserve a personalized baby poupée if one were to have the fortitude and stimulants required to achieve such a task, one would likely attain a sense of metaphorical imagery. There are metaphors for art, floods, beasts, pigeons, love songs, or maybe I have it backwards. There could be metaphors for humanity, disaster, and dolls. Either way, The Beast is probably filled with several metaphors for which I missed their significance, except for any references to flooding or fires. Flooding and fires are metaphors for disaster, whether real or impending.

Léa Seydoux and George MacKay act with the necessary talent to put together movies like this, but movies like this remind me how I would appreciate it if restaurants were to offer Half the Food for Half the Price.

I wouldn't mind directors offering Half a Movie for Half the Price.

This "La bête" is a strange filmic object, a science fiction melodrama between Lynch, Cronemberg and the minimalism of certain French experimental cinematography a la Godard, also touching on liminal oriental aesthetics, between the kitsch of a Sion Siono and the intellectualism of a Tsukamoto or a Park Chan-wook. The result is an exhausting aesthetic requiem, which romantically travels through time to forget it and make it forget (purify it in its DNA), a bit like the Gondry of "Eternal Sunshine..." and "La Science des rêves", but always cold and inexpressive, almost, in the extreme (in)expressive nuances of Léa Seydoux's face and in the icy looks of the substitute George MacKay (the film was written for the late Gaspard Ulliel). Freely inspired by Henry James's 1903 story "The Beast in the Jungle", Bonello's film talks about love and fear as engines of revolutions and annihilation, necessary but mysterious upheavals. Bonello's first attempt at sci-fi themes claims the right to transmute cinematographic language in an attempt to give a new original form to the unspeakable: the operation is halfway successful, in my opinion, because it fascinates aesthetically but is a bit exhausting on a narrative level and form. One remains dumbfounded and tired after the two-hour-plus duration, visual snippets remain in memory a la Oneohtrix Point Never, one would almost think, crazy sensorial splinters from other eras that resonate inexplicably, perhaps evoking the most famous motto of Hildegard of Bingen "Composing unknown characters and making an unknown language resonate." A mysterious and fascinating cinematographic object, undoubtedly, but not of immediate enjoyment or assimilation, but capable of arousing reflections and reasoning after the fact: a film to be investigated, to dig into for satisfaction. For many but not for everyone.

Though it's really way too long, I did rather enjoy the developing chemistry here between Léa Seydoux ("Gabrielle") and George MacKay's "Louis". The story isn't really structured, it's all largely dictated from her consciousness lounging in the bath of Guinness no longer needed by "Baron Harkkonen" where she is having her DNA cleansed. This is ostensibly to make her life happier and more fulfilled, to take the rough edges off disappointment and pain - and generally to turn her into a rather soporific drone. The thing is, whilst plugged in and gently soaking we discover that her brain isn't co-operating with the process and that she is having very lifelike fantasies - historical, contemporary and futuristic with the handsome and enigmatic "Louis". The story in itself isn't really up to very much. It's an episodic jaunt through what is/was/might be their lives - together and apart. What does work well is the ambiguity. The sense that artificial intelligence, either working on it's own or at the behest of humanity, can rearrange our thoughts and our memories. It can create as convincingly as it can delete comprehensively - and all because there is a sense that emotions are unpredictable, unreliable and therefore a threat to the stability of a new "natural order". The dialogue can meander into the realms of psycho-babble now and again which does detract from the subtle but clear thrust of the narrative, but it is actually quite a scary prognosis of what might become fact if we are not careful to protect what is real and important.

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.

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.

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.

Some reviewers have invoked Lynch and Haneke, but those directors' involving subtleties are completely absent. This comes off more like the worst Cronenberg you've ever seen (an imaginary one, not A Dangerous Method), combined with the overblown, barely-comprehensible and boring aspects of Christopher Nolan.

The script is deeply pretentious and clunky. How Seydoux ever agreed to this is beyond me. The writers fail to develop the AI material beyond a reflection of the most basic contemporary fears. It's the type of SF that gets made by people who've apparently seen & read very little of the genre - which mixing up the various timelines at random cannot disguise. But it's not just the script. The set piece imagery consists of hackneyed tropes from SF past (flooded & deserted streets; a dollmaker's workshop) which only serve to remind you how much better the themes were dealt with by Ballard, Fassbinder, Scott etc.

The music is inappropriate and too loud, coming & going to no effect, as randomly as the scenes themselves.

Perhaps most cripplingly, the love interest guy is annoying and not believable as Seydoux's lust object. There's a scene featuring several minutes of heavy breathing that made me lol. I walked out soon afterwards. The film must have been an hour and a half in by that point, and showed no signs of staggering to a close.

The three stars are all for Seydoux, who needs a better agent.

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.

A cool concept that's lost in the confusing execution. A good score with sleek set pieces but the jarring tonal shifts seem random. Clearly deep messages & themes but I can't get my head around them. Yet Seydoux is mesmerizing as always.

. .

. A cool concept that's lost in the confusing execution. A good score with sleek set pieces but the jarring tonal shifts seem random. Clearly deep messages & themes but I can't get my head around them. Yet Seydoux is mesmerizing as always.

. .

. A cool concept that's lost in the confusing execution. A good score with sleek set pieces but the jarring tonal shifts seem random. Clearly deep messages & themes but I can't get my head around them. Yet Seydoux is mesmerizing as always.

This is the first time that I 've found myself wondering "What on earth is going on???" not once but several times during a movie. For the life of me, I cannot understand those critics who give it a 5* rating. Admittedly I'm not one to drool over 146 minutes of Lea Seydoux's snub-nosed beauty and found her bland presence difficult to enjoy. And if George Mackay recovers from this serious misstep on his cinematic cv, then he has an agent worth his weight in gold.

I have not seen any of Bonello's previous films, so have come into this film cold. I did note the celebrated type of director that he is associated with - Nolan, Lynch, Cronenberg and Scott to name the most quoted - but the lack of one quality definitely sets him apart from them and that is "lack of coherence". I'm all for a film needing to demand a degree of forbearance from the audience but for the audience to know the importance of dates and events shown by the film - a flooded Paris, a California menaced by earthquakes and a serial misogynist killer (that in particular could result in a lot of misplaced guesswork !!) and then to cap it with a projection into the future where the only striking feature is a night-black mud bath that is used in the process of "cleansing the body totally of it's DNA characteristics", it really is asking a lot.

Maybe the film has value as a warning of how uncontrolled A. I. might cause humanity to become mindless drones but then the "masters of the universe "of Silicon Valley have more than got us halfway there. So perhaps Kubrick's "2001" and Gilliam's "Brazil" are more relevant cinematic touchstones here. As for checking whether Henry James's "The Beast in the Jungle" has relevance here, that's not for me. I'd rather spend a day watching paint dry.

This movie runs into one big issue. Is it trying to portray something spiritual or something scientific? I can't tell was the film's theme based on karma, time travel, or biological. It seems to be conflicting. The film's overall theme was obviously based on karma, one's past actions have an effect on one's future life. However, it was based on something scientific as well because of the whole theme of purifying one's DNA. I got totally lost at this point. Plus, how do you purifying DNA? You DNA is passed down from ancestors. Shouldn't the ancestor's lives be portrayed? Also, are you trying to show time travel with fortune teller? This movie would hit it out the park if it got this all cleared up. I found the fear to love theme a first for romance film.

Have you ever watched a movie that required a lot of work from you to understand, and you just didn't feel like putting the work into it? And you sort of felt a little bad for not wanting to, because you felt like it made you the problem, not the movie? And that there was maybe enough raw material there that if you had put the effort into it you might have found that you liked the movie more? But you didn't put the effort in, because when it came right down to it, you just didn't want to? That was me with "The Beast."

I really disliked this movie. I disliked almost everything about it. I didn't enjoy any of it. It was really long and droning, and it bored me. I didn't care about trying to unravel its convoluted across-multiple-timelines puzzle plot or connect the dots between the three main stories featuring the same two actors playing different (or maybe the same?) characters at different points in time. It gave me a lot of anxiety, because it seemed to be saying anxious things about the state of our modern world, but I'm not sure what it was saying, and I don't need a movie to make me more anxious than I already am. I don't like Lea Seydoux much. I find her cold and difficult to warm to as an actress. George MacKay is fine, but he's not good enough to keep me vested when nothing else about the movie does.

I'll leave this movie to others who are in the mood to give it a try.

Grade: C.

THE BEAST connected strongly with me and I recommend it to adventurous film lovers everywhere.

I wasn't sold on Bertrand Bonello until now. I'd passed over some of his stuff, and abandoned other movies he's directed midway into them just from exhaustion with his whole iconoclastic approach. This time, even though he's at his most freewheeling, it all works and it all pays off.

Bertrand Bonello and his stars bring the themes of Henry James' source material vividly alive with this picture. It's by no means a tidy unfolding, as nothing this director creates ever is, but it is unwieldy and eclectic in a way that builds out keen resonances for the audience. While we may rocket across epochs, juggling characters, shooting formats and story tones freely, we never lose sight of.what's on the line--which is no less than our unthinkable gall to surrender ourselves to love.

Lea Seydoux is a once-in-a-generation talent who commands the audience at every moment she's on screen, working within her typical economy but also a range not yet seen within a single feature. I completely lost myself in the exquisite beauty of what is, finally, pretty lonely suffering.

We all know that Seydoux can carry a picture, but it's George MacKay who really astounds in the second half of THE BEAST as he shifts personas from a hapless, hopeless romantic into a grimmer visage of loneliness.

The past comes alive in oddly quaint strokes, and the future stuff is nicely stripped down and to-the-point. Bonello sneaks from one thing to the next, ambling down the well-worn avenues but also taking the wrong corners in different genres--all within the same picture. I couldn't help but smile and recall our old buddy Nicholas Roeg.

The director and stars draw the audience through it all so resolutely--even elegantly--that by the time we reach our inevitable crescendo, it feels like something big, striking and important. So perfectly committed and weirdly balanced is its depictions of the human heart across time and territory that an internet clip of Korine-ian abjection sits at equal comfort alongside a stuffy aristocratic courtship. It's no fluke that gonzo neo-romantic Xavier Dolan punches in as co-producer here.

THE BEAST is a film that believes in "true love", not in some facile, precious way... but in that awestruck, abiding way that you feel when you encounter such a thing in real life. The palpable investment that its two leads ante up bolsters its power. Call it an instant classic of the least probable sort, and surely the best movie of this director's career. Has Leo Carax seen this??

So much painstaking craft went into this film, including deeply committed performances by Lea Seydoux and George MacKay, that it's unfortunate that this layered and ambitious work goes down as a misfire. It was a close call throughout. As uneven as it is, I kept wanting to see where it was going. Very little would have had to change to give this a passing mark. Extremely hit and miss, it's one of more frustrating films in recent memory.

While it can be quite a slog in the early going, the film constructs a gripping storyline as it jumps from one distant era to the next. The story envisions a young woman in a bleak, soulless future in Paris where society is dominated by A. I. and human economic utility and normal emotions have been marginalized or rendered anachronistic. She is seeking to wipe her psyche clear of past traumas, which require her to return to a couple of past lives which have still left an emotional impact. It is along the way that she keeps crossing paths with the same enigmatic male stranger.

Some plot threads are more compelling than others. A terrible fire in a doll factory is expertly depicted. MacKay's character dramatically devolves in the middle era. A portrayal of an austere early 20th century Europe, a malcontent early 21st century Los Angeles and a bleak future all make the structure of the plot very intriguing. Where the film falls short is its execution. Mementos ranging from pigeons to dolls to surgery all feel like more like cheap, manufactured road posts than compelling metaphors or effective symbolism. Even if one can overlook that, a sloppy and ludicrous ending ultimately sinks the film.

It bears repeating that foreign films, especially French films, often get away with all kinds of poor quality that would normally get a Hollywood film eviscerated every which way. It's not the first time I've seen this. When a film like this comes along, that double standard is all too visible to ignore. Not recommended.

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.

I slept through parts of the film. The dialogue was rather shallow and confused for the subject it aims to convey, and the whole love story through time far too outstretched (and frankly dull). Performances are soulless, perhaps purposely, and the latter part is such a verbatim homage to David Lynch, it left me questioning this decision more than anything. For Lynch fans, the filmmakers should have hardly put forth such a simplistic moral.

Since I'm required to type more characters, I'd just refer the viewers to the Lynch/Mary Sweeney trilogy, namely Fire Walk With Me/Lost Highway/Mulholland Drive.

Let's be clear, for this, you can't be faint hearted - you will need a strong constitution, when this gets started, interpretation is the key, as without, you may just flee, missing out on what the maker wants imparted (although absorbing to the end there's a good chance you won't make head nor tail of what's going on). In a future where the world's run by machines, with intelligence they interact like fiends, Gabrielle gives them an ear, bathing in liquid not clear (tarlike in fact), she is taken to a world that's made of dreams. There she interacts with someone that she loves, the scenarios are there to give a shove, to remove adoring bond, of the one that she is fond, and extract her hand from fitting, in the glove.

Both Léa Seydoux and George MacKay are quite spectacular, and so are you if you can connect all the dots.

You know?? That dream that does not make sense at all and jumps around time. You are watching from afar, and you are aware that you are dreaming. However, it goes on, and you stay watching it anyway. 'The Beast' is exactly that. It's surprising that I finished the movie, but there's nothing left for me, literally nothing I remember or like about. Did the director even know what he's saying or doing with the movie? Tip for viewers: 'Don't ruminate or analyze. Just watch.'

Short of one hundred twenty five characters. Now seventy nine characters. Now fifty characters... Can I just post my review for 'The Beast'?

With all the strange things going on in Bertrand Bonello's _The Beast_ as distraction, no one seems to have mentioned the weirdest: reincarnation seems to be taken for granted. Either that, or they characters live in a computer simulacrum. As a result, there is absolutely no stake in anything that happens. The pixels can just reconstitute itself and life stumbles on. It is cinema without consequence, without faith.

At least Lea Seydoux's three lives makes _The Beast_ worth watching. She plays a Parisian pianist in 1910, a Los Angeles aspiring actress in 2014, and an underemployed in an AI-ruled future. The emotions! The pageantry! (The set design is impressive too. The change in aspect ratio is a bad gimmick.)

The film is loosely based on Henry James's famous short story about a man's foreboding of impending tragedy. That fear leads him to waste his life and chance of redemption. But the sense of "longing for an exalting experience that will redeem a humdrum existence" (wikipedia) associated with the novella, and found in the other recent adaptation (with Anais Demoustier), is largely missing. Seydoux's characters are afraid all the time, but seemingly of small, irrelevant things. Loss of self via digital identity theft, or having her likeness commercialized into dolls, or to neural engineering -- but not to social media tribalism, or mind altering drugs which she takes at one point? Climate change, limited to flooding in London? Soulless modernity, restricted to the rise of Schoenberg? With so much to shoot at in the modern world, Bonello seems to have picked all the wrong targets.

One clear influence on the middle stanza of _The Beast_ no one has mentioned is Haneke's _Funny Games_, also about home invasion and double victimization by "rewinding" the scene of the heroine's escape. It is gratifying to me that the Cinema of Humiliation merchant Haneke is all but forgotten these days. Bonello isn't quite as misanthropic. But his cinematic vision is just as small-time.

To the seemingly many that dislike this film, i can totally understand why that might be the case.

It's a tough ask to sit through 140 minutes of an anthology film that kinda seems to have a disjointed plot structure.

In my opinion, i think you'll be more forgiven of the films obvious shortcomings if you're a fan of Léa Seydoux. She's incredible. The film showcases her expert acting prowess, playing multiple characters stretched across different timelines. That alone had the film in my good graces.

Unfortunately an anthology plot comes with its drawbacks. Many films that have employed this medium, with few exceptions, often fail to make the different story blocks feel like a cohesive structure. Viewers, myself included will gravitate to a specific story in the anthology. In this case i much preferred the 'first act' of La bête.

If you're looking for a sci-fi film, this is not it. It's a drama-thriller love story that span different timelines.

The best way to approach this film is with minimal awareness of the content or plot. Although ascribed to a certain genre, that is an inaccurate representation.

As you move through acts, the film evolves and shifts. Pacing cycles from slow burn to a quickened pace, back and forth over ~2.5 hours. Bertrand developed the score concomitant to the script, shifting between studios writing a scene then musical accompaniments before moving onto the next. This attention to creative detail was not lost on me as I found myself moving all around in my chair throughout the entire film.

The film is a labor, one that can be exhausting if you're not a reader as they shift between French and English, but the payoff is worth it. There are so many things I want to write about the film but influencing someone's viewing of it is a major disservice. If you love film and stories, and this is all you know about it, stop, see it. Bertrand wrote the role for Léa and it is so evident. She, and all her costars, allow us to follow them on this enigmatic journey, one I'm hesitant to provide any insight into.