THE BEAST (2024) review
written by: Bertrand Bonello
produced by: Bertrand Bonello, Guillaume Bréaud and Benjamin Charbit
directed by: Bertrand Bonello
rated: not rated
runtime: 145 min.
U.S. release date: April 12, 2024
I had to watch “The Beast” (“La Bete”) a couple of times before I landed on my overall thoughts on it. That’s not at all a slight against the latest from French writer/director Bertrand Botello, but simply a testament to the density of this strange sweeping sci-fi epic. It could also be considered a horror and/or thriller tale, but Botello isn’t necessarily concerned with genres here. He’s offering three (possibly four) tales set in different time periods, in which the two leads are playing variations of the same characters as one of them desires and searches for a love connection. However, such a quest winds up with similar results, and perhaps that’s the titular beast that looms eventually (and inevitably) rears its head each time. Within each story, there’s this sense, this fear, that you can’t stop what’s coming.
The trio of stories starts in Belle Époque Paris of 1910 and then weaves throughout from 2014 Los Angeles to a sterile post-pandemic unknown setting in 2044. In all three timelines, Léa Seydoux plays a woman named Gabrielle. The first Gabrielle we meet is a miserably married yet talented pianist at the end of the 19th Century; we then find her as an aspiring actress in 2014 Los Angeles, and then a woman in 2044 who has chosen to have the leftover emotions from her past lives erased through a sci-fi submersion tank assisted by an articulated robot arm to the brain. Gabrielle runs into the same problem in each period: fear prevents her from accepting love.
Fear is also played out during the cold opening of “The Beast”, which finds Seydoux surrounded by a green screen as she is given some off-screen direction from a filmmaker. This is the fourth possible timeline (assumably taking place in the present-day) that bookends the film. It could be Seydoux auditioning for a horror flick or Gabrielle as an actress doing the same. It could also be a meta-statement from Bonello, his way of commentating on the use of CGI in modern-day movies. In this scene, Seydoux (possibly as Gabrielle) is asked to imagine encountering a beast within her home and apprehending it, which she does while letting out a chilling scream. We can’t see what she sees any more than she can, and yet the fear is apparent. Maybe this beast isn’t absolute, but it feels real to Seydoux and the various Gabrielles she portrays. The scene then dissipates into an abstract collage of pixels, taking us to 1910 Paris, France.
This is where and when popular concert pianist Gabrielle Mannier (Seydoux) shares her fear of an impending catastrophe with Louis Lewanski (George McKay), a young Englishman she meets at an aristocratic party. Louis shares that he’s convinced they met years ago at an opera, and while she’s amused, Gabrielle informs him his details are inaccurate. One thing that Louis recalls seems accurate: he remembers that Gabrielle told him that she has this continuous feeling that something terrible will happen to her or the people she loves. This is where he swears to her that he will protect her from “the beast that walks beside her,” which makes us wonder what/who the beast actually is.
This period is loosely inspired by Henry James’ 1903 novella, The Beast in the Jungle, about a man whose fear of a future catastrophe becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Bonello takes that and flips it here, plaguing Gabrielle with a consistent looming fear instead of Louis.
Despite her marriage to Georges (Martin Scali), who owns a doll factory that is switching from porcelain to celluloid, Gabrielle gradually develops a relationship with Louis. It takes a bit for the romance to kick in, though. This is also right around the time in history when a great flood takes over the City of Lights. So, which is the beast (or fear), the potential romance or the looming flood?
When the storyline shifts to 2014, we meet Gabrielle “Gabby” in Los Angeles as a model with aspirations of acting and is currently housesitting a modern lavish place in the hills. The Louis we meet in this time period is an insecure incel who spends most of his time posting recorded posts on his YouTube channel, letting viewers know about his pain…how he’s been rejected by beautiful women all his life and wallows in his virginity. This Louis is very different from the charmer we saw in France. His sociopathic tendencies show when he eventually encounters Gabrielle, seeing her as an avatar of everything he’s been denied in life. These L.A. scenes have a surrealistic feel to them, giving a Lynchian (“Mulholland Drive”) or David Robert Mitchell (“Under the Silver Lake”) vibe that accentuates the unsettling feeling brewing the surface of what we see at face value.
Interestingly, Bonello based the 2014 Louis on an actual person. During that same year in real life, Elliot Rodger uploaded a lengthy misogynist manifesto and proceeded to kill six people (injured fourteen others), by gunshot, stabbing, and vehicle ramming, near the campus of the University of California in Santa Barbara on May 23rd. Many of the recordings we see the 2014 Louis make are line-for-line what Rodger stated, which gives this part of “The Beast” an unsettling parallel to our reality.
The differences between 1910 and 2014 Louis also confirm that Gabrielle remains starkly the same within each period. In each timeline, she has this foreboding feeling that something uncertain (albeit unsettling) is either happening or will happen. That’s why it’s fascinating to see how McKay approaches these iterations of Louis, which are entirely different in every way. It’s not just that the British actor has a convincing American accent, but his 2014 Louis is almost unrecognizable compared to what we saw in 1910 Louis. That’s somewhat due to his looks but primarily his unstable behavior.
Bonello intersperses our visits to the Gabrielle and Louis of 2044 between the stories of 1910 and 2014. The more time we spend there, the more we learn about the world of this near future. We learn that AI has saved the world from nuclear destruction and inflated the unemployment rate to 67%. Although much of the geography and architecture in this non-descript city (an easy guess would be somewhere in England or France), the limited people we see look similar, apart from full headgear worn in public for proper breathing.
The reincarnated Gabrielle we meet considers having her mind cleansed (or a “DNA purge”) of her past lives. This is something the 2044 Louis is thinking as well. This process involves a complete submersion in thick black liquid and the assistance of a mechanical arm, overseen by a humanoid doll (dolls are a reoccurring motif). When Gabrielle elects this procedure, the doll assigned to her is named Poupée Kelly (played by “Saint Omer” standout Guslagie Malanda), and, despite her coldness, she makes herself available to Gabrielle to assist during the post-procedure phase. The 2044 purging process seems to come from a desire to actually feel something, as opposed to the simulated world people have immersed themselves in this timeline.
Seydoux and McKay have their work cut out for them here, and they excel in their multiple versions of Gabrielle and Louis, respectively. The two actors are the constants that ground us when the storylines become somewhat unwieldy. It’s always been hard to take our eyes off of Seydoux – not just because she’s beautiful, but because her work is often bold and mesmerizing (even when she’s James Bond’s love interest, she’s more interesting to watch than he is – sorry, Daniel Craig). She’s incredibly captivating to watch in “The Beast” due to what the roles require of her, confirming that it’s worth seeking it out anytime she’s in a film. McKay’s work as Louis showcases the actor’s range more than any other role I’ve seen him portray. Both actors portray characters that keep us guessing, but much of that has to do with what they’re doing with what they’re given.
The overall conceit interwoven throughout “The Beast” is fascinating and relatable. Understandably, one would wish to remove the past to feel whole in the present. However, our past emotions (or memories, for that matter) often make us who we are today. So, what would we do, and who would we be without them?
Bonello injects the song “Evergreen” by Roy Orbison, which shows up more than once, and its appropriateness dawned on me the more I thought about this film (and I’ve thought about it a lot). That’s a fitting song considering calling something “evergreen” (like love, let’s say) is to say that it is universally and continually relevant, unlimited in applicability to a particular event or date – meaning these feelings are always there.
RATING: ****
