La bestia

If, like me, you like your films to be unique, and unlike the majority of other movies, then I wholly recommend that you check out The Beast. The film is a grotesque, erotic, fantasy fairytale that centres around a mythological 'Beast' that is rumoured to wander the grounds of a French mansion and lusts after women. The film is very daring with it's subject material, and that is something to give it credit for. The theme of bestiality is a definite taboo, and for good reason, I might add; but the film conveys it; straight and to the point. Like other films that handle a taboo subject at their centre, The Beast could have gone around it, and made us use our imagination to fill in the gaps, but Borowczyk didn't do that, and he is brave in that respect, especially as making a film like this will leave him open to all kinds of criticisms, but the fact that he went ahead with it, in my view, means a big thumbs up for the guy.

The film starts off with a sequence that sees a randy male horse mount a female. This opener puts an exclamation mark on the film and prepares the audience, in some ways, for the incredible, tour de force of eroticism that they are about to see. The scenes which see the beast mate with the woman are gratuitous and shocking, and are bound to offend many people (hence the reason it was banned for over 20 years), but these scenes are not merely an excuse for Borowczyk to shock the viewer; this film has a defining point. As said during the film; the only difference between man and beast is intelligence. Both man and beast have instincts, only man knows how to control them. The Beast explores this difference between man and beast through sexuality; the fantasy sequence in which the beast appears epitomises the control of human desire, and it is only when the central female character lets go of her control that she can see the beast. The film has strong themes of the age-old story of 'beauty and beast' weaved into it, and overall this is a shockingly morbid tale of lust, but not without a moral.

Many criticise the scenes around the film's shocking sex sequences for being boring, but these scenes are important to the film's story. Without these scenes, we wouldn't get to know the characters or the story of the beast, and, most importantly; the story of 'beauty and the beast' would not be able to have it's horrifying conclusion dealt to the audience, and as that is one of the key elements of the film; it would be a real shame. Besides that, Borowczyk keeps his audience entertained through these scenes, not with shocks, but with dialogue and the upper class persona of the family, along with the beautiful shots of the mansion's ground would not be seen, and therefore the stark contrast between that and the events later on in the film would not exist either.

Overall, The Beast is a shocking film. It's portrayal of a taboo subject and the shocking way it is portrayed will ensure that this film is not for everyone. However, if you can get over the film's shock, and embrace The Beast; what awaits is a skilful and beautiful piece of art that should not be missed by anyone that is willing to give this film a chance.

NOTE: This film was recommended to me by Zachary George Najarian-Najafi for "Steve Pulaski Sees It."

Walerian Borowczyk's La Bête is a seriously grotesque film, but unless you have the patience to make it through about an hour of glacially paced exposition, you won't realize why. In terms of going from zero to one-hundred in terms of plot-escalation, La Bête takes the cake with positioning itself like an ordinary, albeit slightly off-kilter, melodrama about an arranged relationship in a close-knit family, before becoming a zoophiliac's ultimate cinematic desire.

The story opens following the death of a businessman named Philip Broadhurst, who leaves his estate to his daughter Lucy (Lisbeth Hummel) with the only condition being that she be married to a man named Mathurin (Pierre Benedetti) by the brother of Pierre's uncle within the next six months. Despite Mathurin's mental deficiencies and deformities, Lucy still agrees to marry him, with her and her aunt Virginia (Elisabeth Kaza) taking a trip to the Pierre's brother's farmhouse. At the farmhouse, Lucy learns of a two-hundred-year-old fairytale about a beast living in the woods adjacent to the farmhouse.

For about an hour, we endure ostensibly neverending conversation between this enormous family-to-be, none of it really amounting to anything other than frustration due to the lack of human interest and a great deal of pointless sermonizing about family and the marital bond. It isn't until the hour mark that Borowczyk, also the screenwriter here, flips the switch and turns La Bête into something cruelly twisted. Without giving too much away, for much of the final thirty minutes of this film need be experienced, the film involves a dark, twisted dream sequence (or maybe not) of Lucy's intimate, sexual relationship with the aforementioned beast.

Borowczyk doesn't hold back in what he wants the audience to see in La Bête, so much so that he's willing to show us a bear ejaculating and performing cunnilingus on Lucy, resulting in Lucy enduring a series of bloody scratches. No taboo in beastiality is left untouched as the film details some of the most wicked sexual perversions you're likely to see come to life on screen in your life. Me being so young, I feel I have a ways to go, which only works to keep me up at night even more.

As an art film, La Bête is rather tasteful up until its final act. The film is nicely shot, with numerous, intimate camera angles taking the place of the predictable scuzzy aesthetic one would expect this film to have, in addition to having several nicely decorated sets and some solid exterior shots of the forest where much of this action happens. As a pornographic film, La Bête is most artful in a sense, but the porn itself is anything but erotic. It almost feels like shock value, especially when we must endure numerous closeups of a gigantic bear ejaculating repeatedly.

La Bête is a curious oddity, destined to gather dust on the seldom surviving, family-owned VHS stores where ultra-weird, almost unspeakable cult classic, and some just stopping at "cult," films precariously placed on towering shelves. I can almost envision an ordinary, black VHS tape with a color-faded, peeling white label with "The Beast" written in pencil, discolored and sun-damaged to look like simple hashmarks, sitting on the shelf looking unassuming and innocent but bearing quite the visual wallop. That's precisely what La Bête is; a visual wallop not for the faint of heart. I'm sure Lucy herself would say something similar.

Starring: Lisbeth Hummel, Pierre Benedetti, and Elisabeth Kaza. Directed by: Walerian Borowczyk.

Another variation and improvisation on the famous and beloved children tale, La Bete (1975) aka The Beast tries to imagine (in very graphic and what may seem offensive and disturbing but in reality rather silly and comical way), what actually happened between Beauty and the Beast? I am amused by many reviews and comments that seem to look too deeply into this movie. I would not go so far as saying that it is a serious and dark exploration of such subjects as sexual frustration, longing, fulfillment, or satirical criticizing of the catholic Religion. I would not even call it a horror-erotic movie. It's more of the parody on all genres it touches or mentions even though it's got some shocking moments in all departments that sure will stay in your memory.

The long (way too long) scene between an Aristocratic young woman and the supposedly horrifying but the most laughable I've ever seen in the movies creature with truly impressive...well anatomy, is set to the clavichord music of Scarlatti and is hysterical. My husband and I both laughed out loud at the exaggerated details of the encounter. The moral of the scene is - beauty can and will defeat the monster. The question is - who is the target audience for the film? For an erotic picture, it is too verbose; for an art movie - it's got too many jaw-dropping scenes of sheer madness and I'd say an abrupt ending. IMO, the film creator did not mean for it to be a serious drama. As a parody of art house/horror/erotica, it is funny and certainly original. Have a good laugh and try not to look for some deep meaning. This story of the curious Beauties and the lustful Beasts certainly is not recommended for co-viewing with the children. The opening scene that may shock an unprepared viewer much more than the infamous scene of bestiality can be successfully used On Discovery channel for the program like "In the world of animals - mating habits and rituals of horses".

Banned for twenty odd years 'The Beast' has finally been unleashed, and believe me it is a movie quite unlike any other! This is a profoundly bizarre mixture of arthouse and grindhouse that is on the surface massively offensive (in a word - bestiality), but is presented in such a ludicrous fashion that the only genuine reaction is to laugh hysterically. The sequences involving the Beast which made the film notorious are only a small part of the whole. In fact it is the contrast between the Beastly and non-Beastly stories that make this movie so strange and difficult to explain. I don't know exactly what director Borowczwk was aiming for, and I'm not sure he did either. But if he was going for a strange mixture of the Gothic, the surreal and hysterical porno comedy he certainly succeeded!

Borowczyk's notorious film begins with an apt 'exclamation mark' - the erect penis of Mathurin's stallion, the shape of which fills the screen as it goes to stud. This film, described by one critic as the "most erotic film ever made" is full of such fleshy exclamation points: those of horses, of the virile servant Pierre, or the eponymous creature. This is a film whose explicit depiction of bestiality kept it off British screens for a quarter of a century, although an emasculated version appeared a few years back on video under the title of 'Death's Ecstasy'. Those who are used to Borowczyk's hothouse mise-en-scene will know what to expect as the director characteristically combines matter of fact staging with lustful fantasy, in a way that only a east european sensibility can carry off.

'The Beast' appeared approximately half way in a career spanning art house successes such as 'Blanche' (1971) to the creative nadir of 'Emmanuelle 5' (1987). Most of his films represent sensuality – especially the feminine kind - being discovered as a matter of primacy then typically, explored in erotic, private rituals. The urgency at which females seek satisfaction in these works is shocking or refreshing according to one's viewpoint. Borowczyk's heroines, when apart from their lovers, typically pleasure themselves quietly in chambers, as in the 'cucumber' scene in ‘Contes Immoraux/Immoral Tales' (1974)(A film in which the content of the flashback in here was originally to have appeared). Although they take their fulfillment, their secret fantasies are largely unexpressed. ‘The Beast' makes explicit this process of gratification, and places sexual dreams before our eyes, most noticeably in an extended flashback sequence. This of course is done after literary precedent (albeit from a tradition typically suppressed or hidden, as in the film itself). On one level of course, Borowczyk has made a variation on Beauty and The Beast. More precisely his film has its roots firmly in the adult realm of the pre-victorian fairy tale, as well as claiming an ancestory from the verse fables which have enlivened French culture, most famously by La Fontaine.

To be honest, much of the plot of 'The Beast' is forgettable, a dramatic concoction which serves a set-up for the director's impending erotic tour-de-force. The modern story is a comedy of sexual manners, contrasting the elegance of life in the chateau with the moral squalor and hypocrisy of its inhabitants. Pierre's repeated, frustrated dalliances merely anticipate the grand inter-species coupling to come. The Marquis' plans, his shabby chateau and brutish son, the forced wedding provide so much window dressing, as stereotypical as the tales that inspired them although Mathurin (played by a suitably glum Pierre Benedetti) comes across as sensitive as well as animal. Standing out without apology, the real concerns here are like the phallic column-stump prominent in the chateau grounds, the images remaining with the viewer after the film is finished exactly those which the director intended – the irrational and sexual.

Although nominally set in the twentieth century, the action of the film could with little difficulty be transposed to earlier times - the middle ages say, where the director has found inspiration before. Apart from the telephone and car, very little intrudes from the modern era. The chateau, full of sharp sounds and still silence, old wooden floors and hushed servants, has an almost institutional air. The presence of the clergy in the house paints a religious-like environment, and one where correctness and arousal go hand in hand - a scenario familiar from such other Borowczyk films as 'Interno di un convento/Behind Convent Walls' (1977). The heated harpsichord music of Scarlatti with its strong rhythmic pattern and run of impassioned semi-quavers, adds to the impression of sexual emotions scuttling free beneath the surface. Outside, the overgrown, rambling grounds have a timeless quality about them. One can almost imagine Little Red Riding Hood skipping through the trees on an errand.

Apart from the baldness of its sexual images, the reason why 'The Beast' provoked such an uproar when first released is because it is an honest, adult work. It deals with human sexuality real or imagined, with complete open handedness, admitting the pretend life without hesitation. The fantastic elements of Lucy's masturbatory day dreams, seen at length and so vividly after she reads the diary, should alert the viewer to that. Mathurin is more than just the other half of the Beauty and The Beast equation. He is symbol-made-concrete of the sexual fantasies she (and by extension, we) enjoy. The 200 year cycle of the beast's reappearance truly marks ‘the return of the repressed', and Lucy's flashback the liberation of desire. More than this her enjoyment of lustful fantasy implies how much we should become the honest brokers of our imaginations. The original view of the BBFC not withstanding, the result is then that any notion of pornography fades away in favour of recognising our true natures. Unfortunately, as Borowczyk retreated into more commercial projects, this straightforwardness disappeared to be replaced by exploitation. As a result ‘The Beast' remains as his most striking piece of film making. After 25 years after it was made it still creates a memorable impression.