The beast
by
MOVIE CATEGORY
In the near future where artificial intelligence reigns supreme, human emotions have become a threat. To get rid of them, Gabrielle must purify her DNA by going back into her past lives. There, she reunites with Louis, her great love. But she is overcome by fear – the perhaps greater fear of surrendering to love – and a premonition seems to announce that catastrophe is at hand. It is a mental, physical, sentimental and sensory journey through multiple universes and historical moments (1914, 2014 and 2044), each of them characterized by a general catastrophe connected to another of a personal nature.
With La bête, Bonello approaches to melodrama and love, yet without renouncing the forays well suited to him into genre cinema, thus creating the highly singular portrait of a woman that encroaches almost into a full-fledged documentary on one of the greatest actresses of contemporary times, the extraordinary Léa Seydoux. A narrative that brings the intimate closer to the spectacular, classicism to modernity, the known to the unknown, the visible to the invisible.
DIRECTORY
Bertrand Bonello was born in 1968. His first feature film, Something Organic (1998), was presented at the Berlinale (Panorama). The Pornographer (2001), was at the Cannes Critics’ Week and won the FIPRESCI prize. Tiresia (2003) was in the Cannes Competition. The Directors’ Fortnight showed On war in 2008. House of Tolerance (2011) was in the Cannes Competition and received eight César nominations. Saint Laurent (2014), also in Competition in Cannes, represented France at the Oscars and received ten César nominations. After Nocturama (2016), Zombi Child was shown in Directors’ Fortnight (2019), and Coma was presented in competition at Berlinale 2022 (winner of the FIPRESCI prize).
