By Matthew Moorcroft

Solid Recommendation

• Directed by Bertrand Bonello
• Starring Lea Seydoux, George MacKay, Guslagie Malanda, Dasha Nekrasova
• Not Rated

The Beast is confounding. Not even in just the traditional sense of being difficult to decipher – any film that opens up with a green screen recreation of a scene from it’s own third act is going to be – but in the sense of I’m not entirely sure all of it’s moving parts are lined up in the way that French auteur Bertrand Bonello wants them to be. It’s a film that feels like it wants to be two things, maybe even three things, at a singular time, and yet doesn’t really seem to know what to make of itself.

And yet, The Beast is effortlessly thought provoking, molding and morphing it’s own filmic layers constantly as almost a rejection of it’s own medium. If the whole doesn’t work, then individual parts absolutely do, and the film’s relentlessly haunting tone sticks with you like a bug that just won’t go away. Months later, the film still resonates, and yet it is still mysterious. It’s a puzzle to be solved, or maybe it isn’t; instead letting be a vibe that washes over you like the best of David Lynch.

The setup is both complex yet simple. Emotions are a threat in the future, and thus a young woman goes into a program that explores her past lives and helps her remove that trauma that ails her from before. There is an obvious connection to the general idea of humanity being responsible for it’s own sins here, but The Beast is more concerned with the singular character at hand as we follow her journey through three different time periods, meeting the same man in each of them with varying results.

Both Lea Seydoux and George MacKay have to do triple duty here, portraying three separate lives of the same character while maintaining each of their individualities. It’s no easy task, but they are more then able to do so, with MacKay in particular giving a career best turn in the second half he morphs into a depiction of incel culture that is both darkly hilarious and terrifying in how accurate it is. The modern day section of the film is where the majority of the film finds it’s footing, it’s themes laid bare – our desire for human connection being our downfall and yet our greatest weapon in the face of death. Fear of falling in love is human nature, let it consume you. Let the beast devour your heart whole.

The film stumbles constantly on it’s way there, mostly due to Bonello shifting between perspectives so much that it borders on alienating even for those invested. Bonello seems to be grappling what he believes to be an impending apocalypse coming for us – one run by AI, automation, and capitalism at it’s apex – but also Bonello wants the love story to hit and I don’t think it quite does. It’s hard to get invested in a love story when ends in tragedy so many times and especially when one of those times is explicitly based on a real mass shooting that for many is still recent in the minds of audiences.

Thinking about The Beast is frankly more interesting then watching The Beast itself though, and while it’s definitely going to warrant a rewatch to unpack it’s hefty narrative ideas I’m not sure if it will ever entirely work. But these kinds of big swings are ultimately what keep the cinema industry fresh and alive, and if anything it gets me far more interested – and curious – to check out Bonello’s other work in the future. A fascinating picture, if ultimately unyieldy.