Bertrand Bonello’s “The Beast” is an audacious interdimensional romance, techno-thriller and Los Angeles noir rolled up in one. This shamelessly ambitious epic is about, among other things, civilizational collapse and existential retribution, yet it is held together by something delicate.
The prologue shows a green-screen shoot in which Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) takes directions from a presence off camera and, with expert professionalism, braces herself to confront an imaginary monster. The effect is uncanny, wryly funny, weirdly sensual and very sad. Bonello sustains this unsettling tone throughout the film, although the individual parts are less consistent. This is the toll of shifting time periods, from a costume drama to a modern mockery of incel culture.
With computer-generated imagery, any opponent — and any era — can materialize in the background. What does this mean for actors? The feeling that great forces move us like puppets runs through Bonello’s genre-bending work (in his 2017 film, “Nocturama,” a gang of teenage terrorists hide in a shopping mall and see themselves reflected in the consumerist sprawl).
“The Beast” follows Gabrielle and Louis (George MacKay), who are lovers, in three incarnations, through three timelines: Paris circa 1910, when the city flooded; Los Angeles in the 2010s; and Paris in 2044, a near-future in which artificial intelligence has almost overtaken the work force.
In 2044, Gabrielle is struggling to get a job. A disembodied voice at an eerily vacant employment agency tells her that her emotions make her unsuited to work, and a purification process that scrubs people of their pesky feelings is recommended. “All of them?” Gabrielle asks nervously. She is a pianist and an actor in earlier timelines, so she values her capacity to be moved and react authentically.
Gabrielle opts for a less intrusive process, envisioned as a bath in black goo and a needle prick in the ear, which involves scanning her past lives to reckon with the source of her sorrows.
Bonello was loosely inspired by “The Beast in the Jungle,” a Henry James novella about a man who is convinced his life will be defined by tragedy. The film’s early, belle epoque strand veers closest to this drama, with Gabrielle and Louis in an unconsummated affair, engaging in breathy conversations inflected with philosophy. In Los Angeles, Gabrielle is house-sitting in a glass mansion; Louis, an incel modeled after Elliot Rodger, fixates on her.
The Los Angeles section has the vibe of a surveillance-style slasher flick. Gabrielle’s laptop is infected by a virus that spawns dozens of nasty pop-ups, including one with a fortune teller. All the film’s talk about dreams and the people who exist within them add to this ambient menace.
Bonello has never been shy about showcasing his influences. Here, David Lynch is a lodestar. In Los Angeles, Gabrielle’s blond bob recalls Naomi Watts in “Mulholland Drive,” and she also sheds a tear while listening to a Roy Orbison cover. Then there’s the ending, a red-curtain climax that lands on a screeching revelation not unlike the finale of “Twin Peaks: The Return.”
The horror that hits in the final moments of “The Beast” tears open a fresh wound. What does the future hold if everything can be determined by the past? If new films are rehashes of old ones? If we’re condemned to the traumas of our previous lives? The film connects this to the emergence of artificial intelligence, which imitates but never truly creates. “Fulfillment lies in the lack of passion,” Louis tells Gabrielle. Is fulfillment what lies ahead?
The Beast
Not Rated. In French and English, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 26 minutes. In theaters.
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