Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) is at a party, and she can’t find her husband. She asks others if they’ve seen him, and they direct her to another salon. It’s 1910, and the party is held at a tony Parisian estate. When she gets to the next room, he’s not there either, and another person suggests a different room.
Louis (George MacKay), a well-to-do young man, spots Gabrielle as she drifts in and out of rooms in search of her husband. He met her six years ago in Naples and has wondered ever since about the great tragedy she had dreaded. In their first meeting, Gabrielle confessed a secret fear that she had harbored since childhood, that something rare and terrible would happen to her. It would strike like a hidden beast and destroy everything in and around her.
This fear of impending doom is not particularly interesting or novel.1 We live in the age of anxiety, which is now coming to a head. The continuation of nearly 250 years of American democracy and the rights none of us have earned but that have accrued to us only through the tears and blood of our forebears depends on the whims of a couple thousand voters in a handful of states who might end up voting for Jill Stein if the mood strikes them. Yet, we go about our day as if this ludicrous sword of Damocles isn’t hanging over our heads when we should really be outside fortifying our homes and stocking up on firearms and penicillin. *ahem* What’s interesting is their relationship, which is cool to the touch but blazing hot at its core. Gabrielle craves Louis’ company. He’s the only person she has ever told about the fear of annihilation that she carries with her. Not even her husband knows.
Gabrielle meets Louis for walks and lunches. They attend a performance of Madame Butterfly, the opera they saw together in Naples another lifetime ago, and slip out before it ends, so they are not seen together. Gabrielle gives Louis a private tour of her husband’s doll factory, and they linger in the back office. They are having an unconsummated affair. There is only one scene where their passion manifests physically. Louis asks to see Gabrielle’s hand after she denies she loves him. He…it’s difficult to describe, but he holds her hand erotically. He runs his thumb against the inside of her palm before encasing her hand in both of his. Their fingers entangle, pulse, and undulate in the way their bodies yearn to mimic. The authorities of repressive countries would place black censor bars over the hands of the actors in this scene.
If only this movie were a period piece. Unfortunately, we zip ahead to the year 2044, where Gabrielle is at a job interview with a benevolent-seeming AI. In the future, humanity is saved from some undisclosed disaster by AI, which installs itself as a benevolent dictator.
Gabrielle can’t get a good job because she’s too emotional; she has too much “affect,” as the AI puts it. Luckily for her, there’s a procedure for that. The memories of past lives and the associated trauma are encoded in DNA, which AI can cleanse so that her subconscious is no longer infected by centuries of trauma. In short, AI wants to turn Gabrielle into something less human and more like itself, more like the dolls churned out in her previous husband’s factory. It’s during this process that Gabrielle views her past life in Paris and then Los Angeles in 2014, where she again meets a reincarnated Louis.
The 2014 scenes are dull. Louis has been reincarnated as an incel, and Gabrielle is a lonely model who is only succeeding mildly. Both characters have been reborn weak, boring, and unlikable.
At this point, you feel the movie drag. You check the time and see it’s nearly two and a half hours long and that there’s a lot of movie left. At the end, when the beast is revealed, you yawn and stumble toward bed. You feel like you’ve been watching this movie all day. The events of 1910 are far worse for Gabrielle and Louis, who meet a haunting and tragic end, than the attack of the titular beast. But it’s a minor tragedy for you, too, since that was the best part of the movie, and it ended too soon.
The Beast
Written by Bertrand Bonello, Guillaume Bréaud, Benjamin Charbit; Directed by Bertrand Bonello
2024
146 minutes
French, English
Recommended way to watch (at time of publication): Criterion Channel
You’ll like this if you like: The Netflix limited series Bodies (2023)
Normally, this is where I would make an awful dad-style pun about how The Beast is based on a 1903 Henry James novella called The Beast in the Jungle but not today, Satan.
This was a DNF for me. Last night, I saw another three-star affair, 'The Story Of My Wife'. Again, with Léa Seydoux in the lead role,, about a man who marries a woman he doesn't know, a sea captain. He gets a lot more and a lot less than what he bargains for. Their relationship start out so interestingly, and then it's like watching the ship sinking for two hours. The best thing about it was the pair work of the two lead actors, but the death blow to the film is its lazy ending. I could see why Lea Seydoux would have wanted to do it because of the wild premise, and the chance of playing a woman who is trying to live her life as her own, but it's a bad film.