‘The Beast’ Review: Bertrand Bonello’s Trippy Sci-Fi Offers A Lynchian View Of The Past, Present And Future – Venice Film Festival
03.09.2023 - 14:49
/ deadline.com
Bertrand Bonello is a director, like Bruno Dumont, whose ascent to date has been quite closely associated with the Cannes Film Festival, so it is a surprise to see his latest — a two-hander starring French movie queen Léa Seydoux — make its debut on the Lido. It is sure to be just as divisive here as it would on home turf, but, for those willing to accept its longueurs and absurdities, The Beast is a provocative piece of sci-fi that follows Twin Peaks: The Return down the rabbit hole of dream logic, spanning three time zones in a surreal but compelling examination of human relationships.
Bonello announces his intent with a strange opening sequence, in which Seydoux, working with just a green-screen background, is directed in a scene that will reappear at the end of the movie. She’s in a house, alone, and “the beast” of the title is in there with her. Seydoux gives a pretty good account of herself, reacting to an imaginary intruder in a non-existent setting, and while it doesn’t make an obvious amount of sense, it does lay the groundwork for a film that frequently comments on its own artifice.
The framing device is that, in the year 2044 — when society is ruled by AI, and humans have become largely irrelevant in the workplace, a woman named Gabrielle (Seydoux) is under pressure to undergo a process that will “clean” her DNA by forcing her to relive her past lives. It’s compared in the film to Buddhism, but there’s perhaps a closer connection to Scientology, which uses past-life regression to get rid of hang-ups and help participants to “go clear”. Gabrielle resists, for obvious reasons, afraid that she’ll lose those fragile elements of her personality that are shaped by her emotions.
As she succumbs, we first see her
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