The Beast
In 2044, human employment has largely been replaced by AI and Gabrielle Monnier (Léa Seydoux, "One Fine Morning," "Dune: Part Two") has so much more to offer than her current position allows. But in order to advance, she will need to have her DNA ‘purified’ of past trauma. Reluctant to lose her emotions, Gabrielle eventually agrees to the procedure and in so doing, relives the events of 1910 and 2014 which kept her from connecting with her one true love, a fear called “The Beast.”
Laura's Review: B+
Cowriter (with Guillaume Bréaud and Benjamin Charbit)/director/composer Bertrand Bonello ("Saint Laurent," "Nocturama") adapts the Henry James novella, ‘The Beast in the Jungle,’ by taking its main concept – losing love because of the fear of catastrophe – flips its protagonist from a man to a woman and recreates it as a science fiction triptych. It is a bold idea and gives the great French actress Léa Seydoux the opportunity to really show some range as a married woman in 1910, a house sitting aspiring model/actress in 2014 L.A. and a worker facing an extreme choice in 2044.
Bonello doesn’t proceed linearly, opening with Gabrielle being directed against a green screen in 2014, a scene involving an intruder and a knife which will later come to fruition in the same segment. Suddenly we jump back in time to fin-de-siècle Paris where the stunningly coifed and attired Gabrielle wanders an artist’s salon looking for her husband Georges (Martin Scali). Before she finds him, though, Louis Lewanski (George MacKay, "1917") will approach, reminding her that they met years earlier in Rome and that she’d told him something that day which he’d never been able to shake.
After a brief foray into 2044 where Gabrielle has her interview, crosses paths with Louis on the way into his, then wanders a Paris mostly deserted yet home to deer and a wolf before meeting a clairvoyant (Elina Löwensohn, “Nadja”) who tells her about the Beast and the good luck that is a pigeon – unless it enters your house – we return to watch the 1910 couple flirt, Louis wishing to whisk away the woman who was once so assured taking a husband would bring on disaster. She refuses to leave the man she married (who protects her from a pigeon which gets into their home), but takes Louis on a tour of the couple’s doll factory, one in transition from the current use of porcelain to the new molded polyurethanes. Told the latter is highly flammable when Louis attempts to light a cigarette, the couple will find themselves caught by the double threat of the 1910 Paris floods and a quickly traveling fire.
Isolated in 2014 L.A. in the large home she’s watching for a Mr. Denver, Gabrielle connects with her former self by the French speaking doll she keeps for company by her laptop, which she will also use to contact a fortune teller who warns her about a man who only makes love in his dreams. She catches the attention of this iteration of Louis who tails her to a nightclub and back to Denver’s house (where she will step on a bloody, dead pigeon in the driveway). But while she’s seeking work, he’s making videos about his hatred of the women who will not sleep with him despite his good looks, nice clothes, Armani sunglasses and Range Rover (this Louis is based on 2014 Isla Vista shooter Elliot Rodger). She will speak to him after an intense earthquake draws people out of their houses, but he refuses her invitation, instead arriving on his own late one night…
The film with its parallel lives, one with a doomed actress, another with a woman who screams in horror when she realizes that her 2044 good fortune has also doomed her last chance at love, is very reminiscent of David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive.” Production designer Katia Wyszkop ("Zombi Child," "Benedetta") creates a club in the last scene attended by a bartender straight out of Kubrick’s “The Shining” as if set in the ‘Twin Peaks’ waiting room. Denver’s home is all glass, the better for outsiders to see in and water is prevalent throughout with 1910’s flooding, 2014’s swimming pool and 2044’s DNA treatment held in a black submersible pool like a sensory deprivation tank without the doors.
While George MacKay never convinces as worthy of the stunning Seydoux, he is quite effective as the creepy incel, but this is Seydoux’s film and she manages to create three different women whose connection is nevertheless apparent. It’s one of her best performances in a filmography full of them and she ensures that “The Beast” is endlessly fascinating.
Robin's Review: B+
Emotions have become a threat in our future world. For Gabrielle (Lea Sedoux), it mean purifying her DNA and revisiting her past lives to resolve her issues of today in “The Beast.”
I have had a crush on Lea Sedoux for a long time and, when I get to see her star in a movie, I am there! So, thank you director Bertrand Bonello for showcasing the actor and her copious talent in, what I can best call, a strange, multi-layered experiment.
The story begins with a green screen and Sedoux standing in front with an off-screen voice giving her direction, with a warning about the Beast that lurks in the shadows. We move, then, to the earliest of the story’s three periods – 1910, 2014 and 2044 – with Gabrielle at a fancy Parisian dress ball.
I will not try to tell the “story” of “The Beast,” it journeys between times (all with Sedoux front and center) and the love story that spans those times. In each world, Gabrielle meets Louis (George MacKay) and the story tells of their unusual romances.
Each period is distinct in its depiction, with 1910 taking place during the Belle Epoque just before the devastation of WWI. 2014 has a contemporary feel before the COVID epidemic and the collapse of the world economy. 2044 brings us into a world dominated by AI, 67% unemployment and a desire to cleanse our mind of bad thoughts.
As I said, strange is the word that comes to mind as I watched Lea Sedoux develop her three versions of Gabrielle, with each very different and very much the same. I think Sedoux kept this overly long intellectual treatise from slipping into almost an indulgence and kept it interesting. There is also a not so subtle warning about the dangers of AI.
Sideshow/Janus releases "The Beast" in select theaters on 4/5/24, expanding on 4/12/24. Click here for theaters and tickets.
