The Beast

This science fiction melodrama jumps between past lives, each haunted by love. Three versions of Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) live very different lives in 1910, 2014 and 2044, with the same recurring ghosts: among them, an apocalyptic foreboding and a man – Louis (George MacKay).

As for the protagonist of Henry James' novella The Beast in the Jungle, which The Beast loosely adapts, a sense of impending catastrophe secretly paralyses the 1910 Gabrielle. Confiding this in Louis fuels a precarious affair set against the Great Flood of Paris. A century later, in Los Angeles, the Louis of 2014 yearns for Gabrielle, an aspiring actor, with much greater malice. All the while, 2044's Gabrielle relives these recollections to purge her 'affects' – a standard medical procedure in this bleak future of AI dominance and emotional sterility.

The Beast, the tenth feature from Bertrand Bonello, uses grand genre flourishes to tell this outwardly epic tale about inner turmoil. That tension plays out largely across Seydoux's meticulously expressive face: framed in period costume, immersed in black liquid, against green screens or on CCTV. All towards an eerie voyeurism that blurs memory and reality, past and present, character and performer.

– Callum McLean