The more abstract and surreal that French filmmaker Bertrand Bonello's The Beast gets, the more beguiling and affecting it becomes. It may not be grounded in reality, but it has a haunting emotional pull that reaches for something deeper and more instinctual. Just as protagonist Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) drifts through multiple lives with a sense of disquieting ennui, the movie imparts that same sense to the audience.
Based very loosely on a Henry James novella, The Beast takes place in three different time periods, in which Gabrielle encounters three incarnations of the same man, Louis (George MacKay). In all three periods, she's inexplicably drawn to him, even as their coupling seems destined for tragedy. It's all part of a process for the Gabrielle of 2044 to "purify" herself, so she fits into an AI-ruled future society in which expressions of human emotions are discouraged.
There's no detailed sci-fi world-building in The Beast, though, and Bonello is more interested in vibes than logic. The movie is split fairly evenly between two Gabrielles of the past, one a renowned pianist living in 1910 Paris, the other an aspiring model and actress living in 2014 Los Angeles. The Gabrielle of 2044 lies in a vat of black goo, with a sinister-looking device poking into her ear, so that she can integrate and assess her past selves.
Like the main character of James' story, the Gabrielle of 1910 suffers from a premonition that some horrible catastrophe is about to befall her, even as she seems to live a happy life, with a loving, successful husband and a fulfilling career. She reveals her premonition to Louis, and they start spending time together, developing a romance that can thrive only in longing glances and brief, accidental touches.
The 1910 segment is the best part of The Beast, and it could exist as a standalone period drama, set during the Great Flood of Paris, when the waters of the Seine rose and the city streets all turned temporarily into canals. There's an eerie emptiness to the environment as Gabrielle and Louis grow closer, as if they may be the only people left in Paris. Their lavish surroundings are tinged with a dark foreboding, both from Gabrielle's premonition and from the movie itself, as Bonello periodically cuts back to the stark future, where the streets are actually empty, and Gabrielle must wear protective gear just to walk outside.
It's a bit jarring when, about halfway through the movie, The Beast switches gears to focus on the Gabrielle of 2014, in a story with strong echoes of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. Living alone in a huge mansion she's house-sitting for unseen benefactors, Gabrielle becomes the target of incel vlogger Louis, and hearing MacKay spout talking points that are lifted from real-life mass shooter Elliot Rodger threatens to derail the sense of the uncanny and ethereal that Bonello has so expertly crafted.
Even that intrusion of harsh reality eventually feeds into Bonello's conception of life as a cyclical process of rebirth and reconnection, and the Louis of 2014 ends up with a much different outcome than Elliot Rodger. That is, if anything in The Beast could truly be regarded as an outcome, since Bonello is constantly blurring the lines between what's actually happening to Gabrielle and what she's imagining, or perhaps what she's experiencing as an echo of a past or future life.
Seydoux gives all of that metaphysical exploration the weight of genuine feeling, and while Gabrielle's essence may transcend time and space, her existence in each particular moment is urgent and honest. As she struggles to understand herself and her place in the universe, she faces uncertainty and death, but she finds grace and beauty all the same — and the audience does, too. ♦
The Beast
