A fatal belief

The Beast
Directed by Bertrand Bonello
Certificate 15, 146 minutes
Released 31 May

As satisfying as it is infuriating, this French genre-bender is part science fiction, part period costume drama and part literary adaptation. It’s based on Henry James’ 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle, in which a man refuses to marry the woman he loves to spare her from the attack he believes will be perpetrated upon him at some point by a horrible beast.

About a third is, as you might expect, a period costume drama, sumptuously shot on film. However, the co-writer and director Bonello introduces two more separate timelines set in 2014 and 2044 and shot on harsher digital technology for a more modern feel.

He also switches the gender roles round, so that the woman Gabrielle Monnier (Léa Seydoux) believes she will be attacked by a beast while the man Louis Lewanski (George MacKay) offers to keep watch and protect her from it.

Gabrielle’s scarcely seen husband owns a doll-manufacturing business and, in 1910, she and Louis find themselves trapped in his doll factory by a combination of floodwater – owing to that year’s Great Flood of Paris – and fire.

By 2044, society is being run by AI, and Gabrielle must submit herself to a process whereby she is purged of emotions by reliving previous lives. You could take this either as a form of time travel or a riff on the concept of reincarnation, but Bonello is less interested in such explanatory plot mechanics than in the three different lives the couple lead in the three different time periods.

She and Louis subsequently rendezvous in a series of dance clubs, or perhaps the same club reinvented, themed after particular years (1963, 1972, 1980).

In 2014 Los Angeles, Gabrielle is an independent woman living alone and Louis an incel (involuntary celibate) stalking her in the belief that no woman actually wants to be with him, although her behaviour towards him suggests otherwise.

In each case, the mindsets and belief systems of the two characters profoundly affect their behaviour and their lives.

This peculiar, challenging conundrum of a movie constantly keeps you guessing, throwing you for a loop whenever you think you’ve managed to get a handle on it.

Jeremy Clarke is a film critic. jeremycprocessing.com

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This is an article published in the May 2024 edition of Reform

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