Meeting again for the first time, hopping from disaster to disaster via DNA
Bertrand Bonello’s unsettling yet alluring contemplation on fate and the future, “The Beast,” is an enigmatic weave of three periods in which two actors – Léa Seydoux (“Dune: Part Two,” “Blue is the Warmest Color”) and George MacKay (“1917”) – play roughly the same attracted-to-each-other, but unable-to-connect souls. It’s based loosely on or, I’d say, more inspired by Henry James’ 1903 short story “The Beast in the Jungle.” In the story, a fickle man of stature feels fated to suffer infamy, and as a result, lives a cautious, coddled existence trying to avoid the inevitable. The punchline is that it’s this that makes him notorious. Bonello’s reimagining is more “Cloud Atlas” (2012) by way of “Mulholland Drive” (2001) than anything truly Jamesian.
The film begins with Gabrielle (Seydoux), a pianist and French socialite, perusing an art exhibit in a Parisian gallery circa 1910. Amid the meandering cascade of transmogrified nude men captured in various torturous states, mouths agape and phalluses prominently on display, she bumps into a young British aristocrat named Louis (MacKay) who claims they have met before. Whether the claim is true or a ploy, the connection between the two feels instant and deep and immediately illicit, as Gabrielle’s husband is in the next room. The flirtation as they walk and talk in dour, somber tones isn’t sexual per se, but more soulful, as Louis vows to be Gabrielle’s savior when she, à la James’ protagonist, professes a perpetual fear she cannot fully articulate. From there we jump to 2044 Paris with Gabrielle working with an AI assistant – they have progressed to fully realistic, near-flesh incarnations and can even engage in sex – to try to find work, but can’t because she is too cluttered by emotion (that fear?) and thus less desirable (because emotions make you less effective, or so that is the premise). In both the Belle Époque and future Paris, the streets are nearly bare, as if a pandemic or apocalypse has occurred. All we ever see is Gabrielle and maybe one or two other wandering souls. The gorgeously shot, stark framing is beyond visceral, and that 1910 timeframe is intentional: The sequence takes place right after the Great Flood of Paris, when the Seine overflowed and the streets were knee deep in water, a historic occurrence that later folds into the plot with dire consequences as Lous and Gabrielle pay a visit to the doll factory owned by her husband (a stoic and purposeful Martin Scali).
The third and most jarring of threads takes place in Los Angeles 2014. Gabrielle is an aspiring actor housesitting a spartan glass manse in a upscale neighborhood while Louis, a never-been-kissed incel who vlogs his hate for women, catches sight of Gabrielle at a club and begins to stalk her. Like that Parisian flood, it’s a natural catastrophe – an earthquake – that becomes an agent of fate for the two.
Given all the time and personal hopping, Bonello’s tight narrative control is more than a neat party trick, but beyond that it’s the immersed performances by the actors that compel. Seydoux, whose Gabrielle is driven by a perennial sense of not knowing and doom, is the more rooted across the chapters, though her opening green screen scream scene and audition clips are priceless, eye-popping pullouts. MacKay is the one asked to do some broad changeups, toggling from dutiful gentleman to angry misogynist blaming the world for his failures. You know that in the filmmaking process there was time to change wardrobe and get into character, but as rendered it feels like bold turns on a dime – a wonderment, to be sure.
Pages from other films are clearly borrowed, but feel new. Gabrielle 2044 undergoing a DNA purification process to become a more employable candidate lies in a black isolation pool with a mechanical arm inserting a long needle into her ear. It’s a scene that feels pulled right from a Cronenberg body mutilation movie, which is hauntingly apt; Seydoux appeared in the auteur’s most recent endeavor, “Crimes of the Future” (2022). With the human-AI emotional connection there’s “Her” (2013), and a bit from Michael Haneke’s grim “Funny Games” (1997 and 2007), in which the rewind of video footage plays into the reshaping of the narrative.
The essence of “The Beast” is not unlike Kar-Wai Wong’s haunting elixir “2046” (2004). It’s imbued with a sense of bridled passion as the future and the past inform and influence each other. There’s dread and desire in every frame. Not all of it clicks, but overall its tonality mesmerizes, captivate and drives at you from within.
