The Beast (2023 | France, Canada | 2023 | 145 minutes | Bertrand Bonello)
Bertrand Bonello’s century-spanning tryptic is nothing if not inventive, but it’s sometimes hard to find the emotion in the high aesthetics. But if you give yourself over to it, you come to realize that maybe the chilly gulf is exactly the point of this stylish filmmaking exercise that melds science fiction and humane mysticism. Whether it’s in any given moment or spanning across time, its interlocking stories confront the impossibility of making deep simultaneous connections.
Spanning turn-of-the-century Paris, the very recent present day, and a post-AI catastrophe future, the consistent link is a recurring duo of would-be lovers played by Lea Seydoux and George McKay. The first of the intertwined timelines adapts from a Henry James novella, with Seydoux in an unsatisfying marriage yet paralyzed to take the leap into a new relationship by a long-lingering sense of foreboding doom. Their courtship is conducted primarily in French (which McKay learned when he was recruited to take over a role originally intended for Gaspard Uilliel before his untimely death). The middle segment leaps to Los Angeles where Bonello jarringly lifts directly from the look and self-filmed monologues of incel serial killer Elliot Rodger. Here, McKay’s chillingly-realized character intersects with a struggling actress who worries that she’s aging into domestic roles. Finally, decades later, we find Seydoux in a rapidly-approaching timeline where science can dull the pains of past traumas, androids act as nurse/therapists, and historically-themed nightclubs are as isolating as always. Through chameleonic performances from our two leads, metamorphic themes of dread, isolation, and longing ripple across the years, informing and commenting on each iteration.
The imagery is outstanding throughout. The high society salons and surreal floods of Paris are richly realized. Sleek present day Hollywood real estate with its floor-to-ceiling windows and top-down convertibles act as a persistent stage for pervasive loneliness. The future looks like a museum piece and therapy is a bed of black goop. Despite the shifts in timeframe, the stories are united by creepy dolls, psychics, and ominous pigeons whose recurring appearances in intertwined stories of unconsummated, never quite synchronized connections echo across eras. Sometimes hypnotic, often alluring, and frequently frustrating, Bonello conveys the universal thirtysomething dread of certain imminent doom in an ambitious film that’s not easy to shake.
A version of this review was originally published when The Beast had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. It opens this weekend in Seattle, with showings at the AMC Seattle 10 and Regal Meridian.