It’s difficult to imagine a movie more zeitgeisty or more French than The Beast (2023), a peculiar, fascinating science fiction film that loosely adapts a Henry James story from the turn of the twentieth century. Does it entirely work? I’m not sure, but it’s weirdly entrancing, and ever since it ended I’ve kind of wanted to watch it again.
In 2044, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) lives in a semi-aborted dystopia wherein the rise of artificial intelligence has saved the world from itself, but also largely supplanted humanity in the running of things. Gabrielle longs for meaningful work, but her human emotions disqualify her. The solution is a “DNA purification” process that situates the user in a sensory deprivation tank, and transports them to their past lives. By re-experiencing and “cleansing” past traumas, individuals can densensitize themselves to the point of being safely tasked with crucial duties. Reluctantly, Gabrielle undergoes this process, monitored along the way by a lifelike android (Guslagie Malanda) and jaunting back in time, first to early twentieth-century Paris and later to 2014 Los Angeles. In each timeline, including her futuristic present, she keeps encountering Louis (George MacKay), a man with whom she’s fatefully entangled. But as her procedure continues, the true nature of their relationship reveals itself as something truly harrowing.
If a short story from 1903 seems like strange source material for time-travel narrative involving A.I. and past lives, well, it most certainly is — but that’s not all that’s weird about The Beast. Inspired by James’ “The Beast in the Jungle,” writer-director Bertrand Bonello layers on New Wave filmmaking sensibilities, post-MeToo elements, quirky science fictional elements, and contemporary future-shock dread in a film that feels like a mutated cousin of Cloud Atlas and Mulholland Drive. Which may, in fact, be overstating the case; it all proceeds in rather stately, patient fashion with French prestige drama vibes. But that description feels useful, given the film’s peculiar mosaic feel, as the story follows Seydoux — from her loveless 1910 marriage, to her aimless Hollywood modeling career, to her purposeless future seeking meaning while hedonistic peers visit retro-themed bars reflecting the music and fashion of past decades. Out of this patchwork, Bonello miraculously conjures a coherent tone, riffing liberally on James’ themes of fatalism and wasted lives, which in Gabrielle’s case assume a scathing feminist subtext. It’s probably a touch too long and definitely oblique, but also strangely riveting in its indirect approach, anchored by the luminous Seydoux’s commanding presence.
