The Beast
La bête
Director ~ Bertrand Bonello
Writers ~ Bertrand Bonello, Guillaume Bréaud, Benjamin Charbit
2023, France-Canada
Stars ~ Léa Seydoux, George MacKay, Guslagie Malanda
Intriguing with a science-fiction set-up, glitching across three timelines and genres (1910, 2014 and 2044; period romance, thriller, sci-fi). The eponymous beast is the sense of dread, of impending doom, a kind of suped-up version of the Black Dog of Depression. The scifi set-up is of an AI future that offers us the choice to purge ourselves of past trauma. Across the timelines, Gabrielle feels this “beast”, but will she continue to resist purging her experiences at the expense of painful memories of love across centuries?
Léa Seydoux and George Mackay are excellent, multi-lingual and multi-accented, and despite some stilted dialogue they are nothing less than compelling. It is their chemistry and skill that invests the film with continued allure. And the filmmaking and compositions are never less than fascinating.
But the extended running time allows time to feel its misjudgements in pacing, or how certain points come to nothing, or how the mystery turns to lack of clarity. Long running times are no obstacle when it’s clear what’s at stake, or when new stakes are introduced rather than just repetition, but when it’s always digressions and running in circles provoking impatience, there’s an issue. For all its elegance and impressive performances, it becomes evident that much of this is muddled: apparently what’s at stake and under threat from technology, somewhat inanely, is a love that reaches across time and even touches a murderous INCEL plotline (the repeated “I’ll open the door” moment was where my investment was fully reduced). There’s a lot of filler with minimal pay off, despite the screaming. And then ends with a befuddling “credits” QR code that had the audience I saw it with chortling and giggling and saying to each other “Really?”. This also somewhat hobbles the film’s intended emotional effect and its message of Technology (AI) Will Murder (pigeon) Love That Spans Across Time.
Peter Bradshaw talks of the film’s eroticism, but whatever tension of repressed sexuality there is evaporates with the narrative concentration on an incel and his oblivious victim. For all its rudimentary tirade against modern technology replacing humanity, the film has nothing to say about the complexities of this troubled character expressing his grievances through videos. In fact, the wide web of social media and how it facilitates such toxic entitlement is suspicious by its absence. This gives the impression that Bonello is cherry-picking. Even Bradshaw’s positive review is reduced to, “The Beast may not add up to a cogent or thoroughgoing critique of all the ideas it invokes, but it’s such a luxurious cinematic experience.” For all Gabrielle’s talk of “the beast”, doom and dread were not sensations provoked in the languid pacing.
A film like ‘The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ takes a sci-fi inflected idea of future romance to genuinely moving effect, but for all its sudden lurch to despair, ‘Beast’s emotional throughline isn’t clear or touching. The spectrum of characters in ‘Blade Runner 2029’ offers a far more thoughtful textured argument about AI in our future lives, however far-flung it may be. Wong Kar-Wai ‘2026’ conjures a more substantial and convincing drifting daydream of romance across time. Of the three timelines in ‘The Beast’, the 1910 period romance is the most satisfying, stirring up feeling. The tour of a doll factory is an enjoyable digression that ends with the fire-and-flood high point, whereas by comparison much of the 2014 stalker-thriller feels like padding, and the 2044 sci-fi just shrugs into a Lynchian homage.
The 2014 stalker section squanders the romantic conviction of the 1910 sequence and the 2044 section doesn’t amount to enough to redeem. It’s not the prolonged running time that makes it feel so long but the sense that any greatness is evaporating in arthouse indulgence before your very eyes.
