Mubi Monday: The Beast (2023)

I'll start this review by admitting that it took me a while to get a firm hold of what was being explored here. It's a sci-fi drama that explores humanity and human connection, and it helps that the two leads are played by the excellent Léa Seydoux and the solid George MacKay, but the structure of the narrative is more convoluted and complicated than it needs to be, as far as I'm concerned.

Seydoux plays Gabrielle, a young woman who signs herself up for a process that will purify her DNA. This is done by regressing her to past lives and scrubbing away strong emotions, but that becomes a bit tougher, and Gabrielle may regret her decision, when she keeps meeting a man named Louis (George MacKay). Gabrielle and Louis seem destined to dance around one another in various lives, not entirely unlike two strands winding around one another to form a DNA helix, but the chances of the two of them having a happy ending is drastically reduced by the very process that keeps reminding them of their times together.

Based loosely on a novella, "The Beast In The Jungle", by Henry James, director Bertrand Bonello was clearly drawn to the heart of the material, so much so that he also worked on the screenplay with Guillaume Bréaud and Benjamin Charbit. That makes it easier to hold Bonello accountable for the mishandling of the main ideas, which may leave some other viewers as disappointed as I was.

Seydoux is as good as she always is, but she also has the benefit of playing someone who acts quite consistently throughout the various time persiods shown. MacKay suffers slightly from the fact that the script requires him to play at least one of his personas in a way that is very different to other incarnations, but he does well enough to often hold his own opposite Seydoux. There are a number of supporting characters, but most of them fade into the background like so much wallpaper. The main exception is Guslagie Malanda, quite brilliant as the "caretaker" who looks after Gabrielle in between her purification sessions.

I've seen a lot of love for this elsewhere already, and I have loved the other four films (three features, one short) I have seen from Bonello, but this didn't work for me. I never really felt the strength of the connection between the characters, nor did I feel the weight of what they could be adding or removing from their lives, despite always rooting for Seydoux and MacKay to somehow overcome the material. I'll just have to wait patiently for whatever comes next for any of these three individuals - Bonello, Seydoux, MacKay - but it's a major disappointment that the three of them couldn't work together on something that could stand out as a highlight for all of them.

And don't even get me started on an "end credit sequence" that asks you to scan a QR code. I couldn't have rolled my eyes any further back into my head if I was able to remove them from their optic nerves.

4/10

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