The Beast Reviews (original) (raw)

Summary The year is 2044: artificial intelligence controls all facets of a stoic society as humans routinely “erase” their feelings. Hoping to eliminate pain caused by their past-life romances, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) continually falls in love with different incarnations of Louis (George MacKay). Set first in Belle Époque-era Paris Louis is a Br...

My Score

Hover and click to give a rating Saved

Not available in your country?

By putting technology on trial as the chief parasite causing modern malaise, but fusing it with a melodrama about love, Bonello has created a wholly original work that pulses with prescience.

Classical and ultramodern – Bonello closes things off with a QR code, of all things – The Beast is an experience both bold and rich.

This was sooooooo good. Lea Seydoux is the undisputed queen of France. Exactly

'The Beast' tests your patience with its long runtime, cryptic story, and unconventional editing. But getting involved pays off because Bertrand Bonello offers a mix of genres, interesting ideas about human connection, and complex storytelling that converge in the relationship of two individuals transcending time and space. It's like a more contemplative version of 'The Matrix' injected with a fine dose of Lynchian content. A romantic drama embedded in science fiction that has a lot to say about where we are headed as a species in a world increasingly obsessed with production and performance.

Rather than copying the core premise of the short story, Bonello’s French- and English-language adaptation uses James’ dense, descriptive prose to weave detailed textures and sensations in each of his timelines.

It overflows with intriguing ideas, even if they aren’t all fully explored.

Its devotion to the untamed territory of the human heart, its artfully discombobulating time and locale shifts, the shifting personae handled with marvelous fluidity by Seydoux; it takes you somewhere, and more than one somewhere.

The Beast is an unusual film: challenging, ambitious, and inward. Even when inscrutable, as it often is, it holds the attention, though less so the longer it lasts, and it lasts nearly 2½ hours.

In one of those odd happenstances of cinema, The Beast shares those themes of processing romantic trauma through temporal displacement with Alice Lowe’s Monty Python-esque Timestalker: but La bête lacks its pithiness and humanity.

Impressive and provocative film without being too woke , worth mentioning these days . (Even though even here there was a whole scene / part about incel culture and all that , try provoking Blm / antifa types for a change that would be fresh!) The best elements of the film are the mixup parts of eternal sunshine of the spotless mind clashing with more David Lynch / Cronenberg like time-travel horror. This fusion is about as strange as it sounds and very interesting , quasi romantic but also very tense and scary . French films are still doing their thing in this age , very glad to see that as a fellowEuropean in this over globalist age.

Loved this one, this movie burns slow but it pays off. The last quarter of the movie gave me a feeling of unsettledness that I didn’t experience in cinema a long time ago. This feels like a braid that little by little is intertwined for its grand finale... **** incels BTW

The coolest thing about this film is the closing credits. Not because it's a relief after a 2.5 hour movie, but a QR code is projected to scan for the credits. The time before that is a slog thru a confusing and very slow sci-fi drama. It takes place in an AI-run future where emotions are frowned upon, so Léa Seydoux decides to purify her DNA to eliminate emotion from her existence. Enter George Mackay, who she was romantically involved with over 3 past lives in 1910, 2014 and 2044. This process unfolds very slowly and confusingly without any cool effects…just lots of their interactions. Seydoux and Mackay capture many their emotions with depth, adding an earnest layer. Still, this French import is an exercise in weird concepts that left little emotional impact and plenty of questions. BTW, there's no scary titular monster.

The year is 2044: artificial intelligence controls all facets of a stoic society as humans routinely “erase” their feelings. Hoping to eliminate pain caused by their past-life romances, Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) continually falls in love with different incarnations of Louis (George MacKay). Set first in Belle Époque-era Paris Louis is a British man who woos her away from a cold husband, then in early 21st Century Los Angeles, he is a disturbed American bent on delivering violent “retribution.” Will the process allow Gabrielle to fully connect with Louis in the present, or are the two doomed to repeat their previous fates? I've seen this described as Drama Romance Sci-Fi ThrillerI didn't see any of that. I think I'm losing my taste or something. I've heard that a symptom of Covid is a loss of taste. Can you lose your taste in movies? That's two in a row of bad movies I've had to sit through. This one I did take short naps through periods, waiting for a loud noise to wake me up. Another avant-garde artsy-crafty movie that can only be appreciated by the film critics. I can't see how this got good reviews. I thought with Lea Sedoux it would be worth watching. It wasn't. It didn't have a rating, but I'd give it a PG-13, maybe an R for the use of the F-word a couple of times. In French with subscripts.I don't know what this movie was about. I didn't understand the story or the plot, if there was one. I'm going to have to be very careful in picking my next movie.

Production Company Les Films du Bélier, My New Picture, Arte France Cinéma, Sons of Manual, Ami Paris, Jamal Zeinal Zade, Société de Développement des Entreprises Culturelles (SODEC), Téléfilm Canada, Crédit d'Impôt pour la Production Cinématographique ou Magnétoscopique Canadienne, Canal+, Ciné+, ARTE, Eurimages, La Région Île-de-France, Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC), Département des Alpes-Maritimes, Cinécap 6, Cinéaxe 4, SG Image 2021, Cinémage 17, Palatine Étoile 20, Arte Cofinova 19, Barnstormer Productions

Release Date Apr 5, 2024

Duration 2 h 26 m

Rating Unrated

International Online Cinema Awards (INOCA)

• 2 Wins & 5 Nominations

Seattle Film Critics Society

Florida Film Critics Circle Awards

• 3 Wins & 4 Nominations