The Beast

A salutary lesson in how not to take a very short story and turn it into a very long film. It’s certainly one to swerve if you’re the least bit tired (which I was). Henry James’ source novella was barely 30 pages long when it first surfaced in 1902 and it’s hard to fathom just what Writer/Director Bertrand Bonello saw in it which inspired this sprawling, difficult and ultimately frustrating film. As a vehicle for showcasing the talents of Lea Seydoux as Gabrielle and George MacKay as Louis, it works well. They are both incredibly watchable and their interplay was at times spellbinding. But it always felt that they were out-acting the material. One thing for sure is that if you’re patiently awaiting the arrival of something akin to the creature from the black lagoon, you’re probably in the wrong place and almost certainly at the wrong time. Actually keeping track of time was a major headache. For me it soon became a case of just letting go and allowing the film wash over me. It wasn’t so much that I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing or hearing, but I had constant difficulty in connecting the dots. So in the end I surrendered to our gorgeous twosome as they see-sawed backwards and forwards in time between Paris in La Belle Epoque and an AI controlled world of 2044, stopping off at various points in between. During the course of which Bonello references David Lynch, Goddard, Cronenberg amongst others like a smitten tribute act. Gabrielle initially presents as a famous concert pianist. She haunts the salons of high society, sporting a hairdo of breathtaking complexity and a series of gowns each more mouth watering than the last. She is married but somewhat indifferent to her husband. However Gabrielle exerts a magnetic pull on Louis, who appears on the scene and seems to have no purpose beyond being her sounding board or debating partner (this is an exceptionally talky film). There’s an extended interlude, possibly set in pre Wehrmacht Germany where Gabrielle runs a doll factory. As she explains to Louis the intricacies of the manufacturing process, a fire breaks out and the pair manage, tragically, to drown and I was unclear is this was a dream or a premonition or a memory. In 2014 she turns up in Hollywood as an aspiring actress and Louis is still there, still engaging in deep philosophical discourse, none of which I can now bring to mind. In 2044 she’s a lost soul in a virtually deserted post-apocalyptic world, where AI overlords are busy reprogramming the remaining sentients by “purifying” their DNA, so freeing them from the tyranny of emotion. Initially reluctant Gabrielle is eventually persuaded to undergo the procedure and soon she’s in a pristine clinic having an ominous probe inserted into her ear. This has the effect of catapulting her back to re-experience past lives. Quite what the purpose of this was remained a mystery to me. Was she eradicating memories or learning that emotions were no longer relevant? Now in this most modern guise Louis is no longer the bland hanger on he had appeared before. He has transformed into a predatory INCEL and for an awful moment I wondered if Bonello was making a case for this particularly troublesome world view. Louis had after all been strung along for more than a century. Like I say I was tired and it was an exceptionally long film. But now the tables have turned and the power resides with him. He stalks Gabrielle around the spectacular, over-surveilled home where she is house sitting for some meddling unseen millionaires. There was some tension in their final encounter, but I struggled with it. Gabrielle at last seems to have empathy for Louis, so has the treatment not worked? Is she somehow immune? Are they being set up as some kind of reverse Adam and Eve? This is the problem with these smoke and mirrors multiverse movies. You can never really trust anything you’re seeing or feeling at the time and you suspect VAR could step in at any moment to turn things on their head again to give us an actual beast.

Rating 10/20

Viewed 7/6/2024

Screen 4 (C5)