Bonello’s unclassifiable attempt at a David Lynch-meets-‘The Fountain’ sci-fi mashup is mysterious, meandering, alluring and confounding all at once, as it explores the nature of love, fear and memory as mediated by the threat of artificial intelligence.
Review #2,744
Dir. Bertrand Bonello
2023 | France | Drama, Sci-Fi, Romance | 146 min | 1.85:1 | French & English
R21 (passed clean) for sexual scenes
Cast: Lea Seydoux, George MacKay, Kester Lovelace
Plot: In the near future, emotions have become a threat. Gabrielle decides to purify her DNA in a machine that will immerse her in her past lives and rid her of any strong feelings. But then she meets Louis, and although he seems dangerous, she feels a powerful connection to him as if she has known him forever.
Awards: Nom. for Golden Lion (Venice)
International Sales: Kinology
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Love Across Time; Artificial Intelligence; Dystopia; Anxiety
Narrative Style: Complex
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: General Arthouse
Viewed: Screener
Spoilers: No
Someone on Letterboxd amusingly called The Beast ‘Lea Seydoux Who Can Recall Her Past Lives’, which is an intriguing way to put it.
Bertrand Bonello’s new film is arguably one of 2023’s most mysterious, meandering, alluring and confounding works—and often all at once, and it is to the film’s credit that it has been interpreted in a variety of ways.
I would describe it as an attempt at a David Lynch-meets-The Fountain sci-fi mashup though that is still far from giving an accurate sense of what Bonello’s work is all about. In other words, The Beast is unclassifiable, and as such, a double-edged sword.
Lea Seydoux plays Gabrielle, who inhabits three timelines (the 1910s, 2010s and 2040s) that are intercut rather haphazardly. While it is not difficult to tell which timeline is happening at any given moment, the challenge comes in trying to contextualise its themes from any clear vantage point.
It is the 2040s and artificial intelligence has rendered a society largely free of emotions. Gabrielle wants a job, but first, she needs to go through a procedure that would rid her of affect.
“For a long time, I’ve felt an anxiety.”
However, she is unable to remove a deeply-rooted anxiety that has plagued her—the fear of something catastrophic that would never (or could possibly) happen.
George MacKay (of 1917) is Louis, the ‘love interest’, but various circumstances (social, moral, psychological, fate, etc.) don’t allow them to be together.
Based on the 1903 novella, ‘The Beast in the Jungle’ by Henry James, Bonello ambitiously expands it into a rather lengthy, occasionally ponderous but continually tempting piece that posits love and fear as the two great counteracting metaphysical forces in life.
Bonello’s previous two features, Zombi Child (2019) which explores trauma and memory, and his ‘pandemic’ film, Coma (2022), about reality and simulacra, now seem to be dress rehearsals for The Beast, which takes these themes to another level of abstraction, though its operationalisation via the use and subversion of multiple genres isn’t always efficacious.
Grade: B
Promo Clip:
Eternality Tan 