Bonello’s sci-fi ‘Beast’ is a thing of beauty
THE BEAST
★★★★
In cinemas; Cert 15A
The future always looks so miserable on the big screen. In Bertrand Bonello’s The Beast ,it is a moody, maddening landscape where artificial intelligence (AI) reigns supreme and where humans are forced to give up their feelings to get ahead.
A nightmarish scenario, and it gets trickier. Bonello’s audacious art-house sci-fi sets up its stall across three separate timelines. In one, a couple of lonely, would-be lovers subject themselves to wicked, life-altering experiments in a mid-21st century dystopia. In another, our discombobulated protagonists struggle to keep their emotions intact in early 20th century Paris.
What, you may ask, does any of this mean, and how is it that Gabrielle (Lea Seydoux) and Louis (George MacKay) are able to travel through time? We just have to go with it. You’ll have your questions, and I certainly had mine. Whatever the case, The Beast — a difficult film, but a brilliant one — is impossible to shake off.
We begin with Gabrielle’s surgery. The year is 2044, and humanity is snookered. AI is the way forward, apparently, and unemployment levels are at an all-time high. It appears humans can no longer be trusted to get things done — too many emotions, too many bad decisions — and the only way for young Gabrielle to find a fulfilling line of work is to undergo a “DNA purification” procedure.
The details are fuzzy: just as, say, Christopher Nolan never fully explained how Leonardo DiCaprio could exist in other people’s dreams in Inception, Bonello is in no mood to disclose the secrets of his murky DNA-cleansing shtick. It’s probably for the best.
However it works, the operation allows its participants to revisit their past lives. Doing so will help remove their desires, their dreams, their deepest anxieties — the things that separate us from our AI overlords, basically. First, Gabrielle is transported to Paris, 1910 (weeks before the Great Flood) where she is no longer a data collector but is instead an accomplished pianist who runs a doll-making factory with her husband.
It’s at a party that Gabrielle encounters a dashing gentleman named Louis, who reminds her that they’ve met before and that she once entrusted him with a secret. It’s an odd one: Gabrielle believes that something terrible will happen to her. She does not know when, exactly, this mysterious catastrophe will occur, but it appears Gabrielle’s existential dread has held her back and prevented her from leading the life she wanted. Is it too late for a second chance? Maybe not.
Back in the real world, Gabrielle encounters Louis at the DNA test centre. He, too, is considering the purification procedure, but is that really such a good idea? A connection is obvious: do Gabrielle and Louis know one another? Were they an item at one stage?
Important questions, and The Beast enters a whole new playing field when Gabrielle has her second surgery. This time, she finds herself in 2014 Los Angeles where she is an aspiring actress and model. Louis, meanwhile, is a deranged “incel” who blames the world on his bad luck with women. Things get really, really weird.
If, at this point, you’re scratching your head in confusion, that makes two of us. Loosely inspired by Henry James’s short story, The Beast In The Jungle, Bonello’s film does not make it easy for its audience. It’s loaded with complex themes and sinister twists, and there are times when it perhaps flies a little too close to the sun.
It’s a story about destiny and identity; about the horrors of modern life and what it means to be human, to be vulnerable, to take chances on the unknown. It sounds like hard work, and sometimes it is, but The Beast is beautifully made, and impeccably acted, and its unwieldy structure mostly works to its advantage.
The sci-fi dressing is a bonus: Bonello’s film thrives not because of the dystopian, time-hopping shenanigans, but because of the stirring chemistry between its star-crossed lovers. If David Lynch had directed Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind it might have looked a little like The Beast. Seydoux conjures magic out of an increasingly absurd set-up; MacKay learned French for the role and was drafted in to replace Gaspard Ulliel, who died in 2022.
Without our exemplary leads The Beast might have fallen apart. It doesn’t, and I look forward to repeat viewings of this mischievous romantic odyssey.