The Beast

This film is confounding. Leah Seydoux shows, again, what a versatile actress she as a woman trying to erase the pain of romance with iterations of the same man across the past, present and future through AI in 2044.

Director and co-writer Bertrand Bonello (Saint Laurent, Nocturama) with Guillaume Bréaud and Benjamin Charbit in a tense, foreboding, but imaginative pastiche inspired by Henry James’ 1903 novella, “The Beast in the Jungle”. Originally, it’s a neurotic man frightened by thoughts that something terrible may happen to him. In this version, Bonello makes Seydoux that person taking her through three different eras meeting up with the same man. 

It starts with Gabrielle (Seydoux) at an exquisite gathering in Paris during the Belle-Epoch in the early 20th century. She is dressed and coifed in magnificent fashion of the time, at a party with her wealthy husband who is engaged with the other guests. Gabrielle meets and spends time exploring the estate and its art with Louis (George McKay) who becomes enchanted with her, and she, with him. 

Louis comes to visit the doll factory Gabrielle’s husband owns which during the 2010 flood in Paris fills with water. Bonello creates an intense drowning sequence. It’s frightening to watch Louis and Gabrielle barely survive. The detailed set design of the doll factory is extraordinary so realistically shot, it is a horrifying sequence of what happens to her husband’s factory.

At a later meeting, in more contemporary times, Gabrielle is auditioning as a model/actress housesitting at a decked out house in the LA hills. Bonello exposes the Hollywood audition process Gabrielle goes through. But that part is brief. The story morphs to Gabrielle being stalked by Louis in present day. He is self-described as a 30-year-old virgin with lethal intentions, resentful of women. 

Bonello sets Gabrielle up as a woman in danger, staying alone who seems to be ok, but there are tense moments as a neighbor reports someone lurking around the house. It’s  complicated by Gabrielle’s interaction with la voyante (Elina Löwensohn) conducting a kind of seance asking leading questions of Gabrielle. Of course, a knife comes into play foreshadowing retribution for her past romantic relationship in flashbacks with the stalker.

The sci-fi part of the film, where we meet her in the future has Gabrielle on a lab table about to get a robotic injection presumably to erase the memory of her past painful romances. As the protruding needle moves closer into her head, Bonello shows her apprehension about going through with this procedure. You, too, will wince.

It’s all very mysterious, tense, frightening, yet sensual. Gabrielle has to face her painful relationships from the past which have caused her such agony until she decides to try to eliminate them. Seydoux and McKay are directed for deliberately slow, methodical interaction. Bonello depicts past, present and future showcasing Seydoux’s versatility playing characters through different eras in a haunting, complicated, frightening history of romance. 

Sideshow/Janus Films   2 hour and 26 minutes    NR

In French and English.