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2023 film by Bertrand Bonello From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Beast (French: La Bête) is a 2023 science fiction romantic drama film directed and written by Bertrand Bonello from a story he co-wrote with Guillaume Bréaud and Benjamin Charbit. A co-production between France and Canada, the film is loosely based on Henry James's 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle. It stars Léa Seydoux and George MacKay, with Guslagie Malanda, Dasha Nekrasova, Martin Scali, Elina Löwensohn, Marta Hoskins, Julia Faure, Kester Lovelace, Félicien Pinot and Laurent Lacotte in supporting roles.
| The Beast | |
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 Theatrical release poster | |
| French | La Bête |
| Directed by | Bertrand Bonello |
| Screenplay by | Bertrand Bonello |
| Story by |
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| Based on | The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James |
| Produced by |
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| Starring |
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| Cinematography | Josée Deshaies |
| Edited by | Anita Roth |
| Music by |
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Production companies |
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| Distributed by |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 145 minutes[4] |
| Countries |
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| Budget | €7.5 million[6][7] |
| Box office | $824,382[8][9] |
The Beast had its world premiere on 3 September 2023 at the 80th Venice International Film Festival as part of the official competition. The film was released theatrically in France on 7 February 2024 by Ad Vitam and in Canada on 19 April by Maison 4:3.[10][8]
In 2044, artificial intelligence has taken over most of the jobs in the world, as humans are deemed useless and incapable of making decisions due to their emotions. Some humans undergo a process to purify their DNA, they enter their past lives to get rid of all strong emotions and be able to find better jobs.
Gabrielle is a young woman who feels aimless at her job, where she reads the temperature of data cores. She decides to purify her DNA so that she may find a more fulfilling job. On a trip to the centre, she meets a man, Louis, and they are instantly drawn to each other.
The first time she tries the purification process, she is brought into a past life in 1910 France, where Gabrielle is an acclaimed pianist and owns a doll-making factory with her husband, Georges. One night at a salon, she runs into Louis, whom she met in Naples six years before. On that earlier occasion, she confessed her lifelong private fear that some kind of horrible catastrophe would happen, an idea she constantly ruminates on. Louis takes her to visit an uncannily accurate medium. Despite Gabrielle being married, the two rekindle a connection and begin spending more time together, although Gabrielle doesn't want to start an affair with Louis because of her fear. She invites him to visit the factory; during that visit, the factory gets flooded and a fire breaks out due to the flammable material of the dolls. Louis and Gabrielle drown trying to escape through the factory's back entrance.
When Gabrielle wakes up in 2044, she is taken home by an android "doll", Kelly, who is charged to look after her until she can return for a second treatment. Kelly takes her to a club, which has a rotating theme of decades (such as the 1970s and 1980s), where she runs into Louis again. He tells her he is still hesitant about undergoing the DNA surgery for fear of losing the ability to feel.
Gabrielle returns for a second round of surgery, where she experiences a past life taking place in 2014, where she is a model and actress house-sitting an architect's lavish home in Los Angeles. Louis is an incel, who films himself complaining that he is still a virgin. He spots Gabrielle coming out of a club and stalks her to the house she is staying in, but does not approach her. She encounters the medium again, still uncannily accurate, in the form of a pop-up ad from a virus. Later during an earthquake, Gabrielle approaches Louis and asks him to walk her home, but he rebuffs her. Later, she hears the song "Evergreen" on television and begins to cry. She hallucinates having sex with Louis, who confesses having the same lifelong fears that she has.
Waking in 2044, Gabrielle revisits the club, but cannot find Louis. She wonders why the song made her cry. The next day, she comes back for her third round of DNA purification, returning to her life in 2014, where Louis breaks into the house with a firearm, planning to kill Gabrielle. She hides in a bedroom and pleads with him through the door. When she attempts to open the door, Louis shoots her dead.
Upon waking again in 2044, Gabrielle is told by the AI that she is one of the 0.7% of the population for whom the surgery does not work. She goes home but decides to reach out to Louis. They meet at the club, where Gabrielle expresses her happiness at seeing him. They dance together to "Evergreen", and Louis tells her that they listened to it "so much when it first came out". Realising that Louis has seen their past lives by undergoing the surgery and can no longer feel in the same way, Gabrielle falls on her knees and screams in anguish.
In a mid-credits scene, the medium calls out to Gabrielle not to go into the DNA purification room, before a gunshot is heard.
The project was announced in 2021, when on 20 January, the French magazine Les Inrockuptibles reported that on 14 January, Arte France Cinéma had allocated resources for Bertrand Bonello's next film, La Bête, a sci-fi melodrama starring Gaspard Ulliel and Léa Seydoux.[13][14]
Bonello started writing the screenplay for the film in 2017,[15] with Gaspard Ulliel and Léa Seydoux in mind for the lead roles,[16] after working with both of them in the 2014 film Saint Laurent.[15] The script, loosely based on Henry James's 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle,[17] was written by Bonello, with contributions from Guillaume Bréaud and Benjamin Charbit.[2] The 2014 incel version of Louis was based on Elliot Rodger, a mass murderer responsible for 2014 Isla Vista killings.[18]
After Ulliel's death in January 2022, Bonello told Variety on 13 February 2022 that he would likely re-cast his role for a non-French actor,[16] explaining later that he wanted to avoid any comparisons with Ulliel and so decided to look for an American or British actor instead.[18][19]
On 16 May 2022, Variety reported that British actor George MacKay was cast as the male lead.[5] Found through an American casting director,[18] MacKay was the last actor that Bonello auditioned for the role; after a few minutes of the audition in London,[19] Bonello concluded that MacKay was the right person for the role.[19] Variety also reported that the film would be set in Paris and California, with its dialogue in French and English, and that filming was scheduled to start in August 2022.[5] Bonello said that the only thing he changed in the script after MacKay's casting was that the 1910 segment of the film was re-written half in French and half in English.[18] On 4 September 2022, Seydoux told Deadline that MacKay learned French for his part in the film, and that filming would resume in late October.[20]
In June 2023, Bonello said in an interview with French magazine Paris Match that The Beast was the film he was "the most proud of today".[6]
The film was co-produced by France's Les Films du Bélier and Bonello's My New Picture, in collaboration with Arte France Cinéma, AMI Paris, and Québec-based production company Sons of Manual. Bonello produced the film with Justin Taurand (under his banner Les Films du Bélier), alongside co-producers Xavier Dolan and Nancy Grant (co-owners of Sons of Manual).[1]
Filming was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic[21][22] and was scheduled to start in April 2022.[17][23] Bonello directed his 2022 film Coma in the meantime, featuring Gaspard Ulliel in his last film appearance.[24][17] Ulliel's death from a skiing accident on 19 January 2022 delayed the filming of The Beast again.[16]
Principal photography began in Paris on 22 August 2022,[2][25][26] with filming also taking place in Los Angeles for a couple of nights, with a small crew and with no authorisation.[19] Filming wrapped in October 2022.[20]
The film ends with a QR code that encodes the URL of a video of the film's credits roll, in lieu of having closing credits itself. Bonello made this decision during the editing, because he wanted to evoke the "brutality" of old films that ended without credits, and because that "fit well with the dehumanization of the film at that moment in 2044".[27]
The Beast had its world premiere at the 80th Venice International Film Festival on 3 September 2023,[28] with its North American premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival later that month.[29] The film was also invited at the 28th Busan International Film Festival in 'Gala Presentation' section, where it was screened on 6 October 2023.[30] It was also selected to the Golden Spike competition of the 68th Valladolid International Film Festival.[31]
Bonello told IndieWire that the film was rejected by the Cannes Film Festival.[19]
With its international sales handled by Kinology,[2] the film was originally set to be released theatrically in France by Ad Vitam on 8 November 2023, but the release date was pushed back to 28 February 2024,[32] and then pushed forward to 7 February 2024.[33][34] Total number of viewers in France during its theatrical run between 7 February and 10 April was 88,273.[35][7]
The film's DVD and Blu-ray release is set for December of 2024 by The Criterion Collection, to be released as part of their Janus Contemporaries line of releases.[36]
The Beast received an average grade of 3.7 out of 5 stars on the French website AlloCiné, based on 38 reviews.[37] On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 87% of 135 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.6/10. The website's consensus reads: "Unwieldy but rewarding, The Beast uses its sci-fi conceit to explore intriguing themes in largely satisfying fashion."[38] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 80 out of 100, based on 35 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[39]
| Award or film festival | Date of ceremony | Category | Recipient(s) | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Venice International Film Festival | 9 September 2023 | Golden Lion | Bertrand Bonello | Nominated | [10] |
| Valladolid International Film Festival | 28 October 2023 | Golden Spike | The Beast | Nominated | [40] |
| Best Actress | Léa Seydoux | Won | [41] | ||
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