The Beast (2023 film)

The Beast (La Bête) is a 2023 French-Canadian science fiction romantic drama film directed and written by Bertrand Bonello from a story he co-wrote with Guillaume Bréaud and Benjamin Charbit. It is loosely based on Henry James's 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle. It stars Léa Seydoux and George MacKay, with Guslagie Malanda and Dasha Nekrasova in supporting roles.

It is a co-production of France and Canada. The film is produced by Les Films du Bélier and Bonello's My New Picture in collaboration with Arte France Cinéma, AMI Paris, and Xavier Dolan and Nancy Grant's Sons of Manual. The project was announced in 2021. Principal photography took place in Paris and Los Angeles between August and October 2022.

The Beast had its world premiere on 3 September 2023 at the 80th Venice International Film Festival as part of the official competition, and was released theatrically in France on 7 February 2024 by Ad Vitam. It was scheduled to be released in Canada on 19 April by Maison 4:3.

Plot
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 have undergone a process to purify their DNA. They enter their past lives to rid them of any strong emotions so that they can 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 one of these trips 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. Gabrielle is an acclaimed pianist and owns a dollmaking factory with her husband, Georges. She runs into Louis one night at a salon. Despite Gabrielle being married, the two rekindle a connection and begin spending more time together. She invites him to visit the factory. While visiting, the factory floods and a fire breaks out due to the highly flammable material of the dolls. Louis and Gabrielle try to escape through a back entrance but drown in the attempt.

When Gabrielle wakes up in 2044, she is taken home by a "doll", Kelly, who is charged to look after her until she can return for a second treatment. Kelly takes her to a club, which is themed after eras such as the 70s and 80s, where she runs into Louis again. He tells her he is still hesitant about undergoing the surgery and 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. 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. One day, during an earthquake, Gabrielle approaches him and asks him to walk her home, but he rebuffs her. Later she hears the song, "Evergreen", on TV, and begins to cry.

Waking in 2044, Gabrielle revisits the club, but cannot find Louis. She questions why she cried at the song. The next day, she returns for a third round of purification, returning to her life in 2014.

In 2014, Louis breaks into the house with a gun, planning on killing Gabrielle. She hides in a bedroom and pleads with him through the door. She tries to reason that Louis doesn't actually want to kill her, and attempts to open the door. Louis shoots and kills her.

Upon waking, she is told by the AI that she is one of the 0.7% of the population where the surgery doesn't 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". Realizing that Louis has seen their past lives by undergoing the surgery, and can no longer feel in the same way, Gabrielle collapses to her knees and screams in anguish.

In a mid-credits scene, the medium calls out to Gabrielle not to go into the room of purification, and then a gunshot is heard.

Development
On 20 January 2021, French magazine Les Inrockuptibles reported that on 14 January 2021, Arte France Cinéma had allocated support for Bertrand Bonello's next film, La Bête, a sci-fi melodrama starring Gaspard Ulliel and Léa Seydoux. The film is a co-production between France's Les Films du Bélier, Arte France Cinéma, My New Picture, and Canada's Sons of Manual. Bonello produced the film with Justin Taurand, alongside co-producers Xavier Dolan and Nancy Grant. Ad Vitam will release the film in France, and international sales will be handled by Kinology.

Bonello started writing the screenplay in 2017 with Gaspard Ulliel and Léa Seydoux in mind for the lead roles, after having worked with both of them in the 2014 film Saint Laurent. The screenplay, loosely based on Henry James's 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle, was written by Bonello with contributions from Guillaume Bréaud and Benjamin Charbit. The 2014 incel version of the character Louis was based on Elliot Rodger, who uploaded a misogynist manifesto to YouTube and killed six people and injured fourteen others near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara on 23 May 2014.

Filming was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was scheduled to start in April 2022. In the meantime, Bonello directed the film Coma (2022) instead, which featured Ulliel in the last movie he filmed and the last work he finished. Ulliel died on 19 January 2022 following a skiing accident, and the filming for The Beast was delayed again.

On 13 February 2022, Bonello told Variety that he would likely recast Ulliel's role with a non-French actor. Bonello later explained that he wanted a non-French actor in order to avoid any comparison with Ulliel, so he decided to cast an American or British actor instead.

On 16 May 2022, Variety reported that British actor George MacKay was cast as the male lead. Bonello found MacKay through an American casting director. He was the last person that Bonello met for the role; the director decided on him rapidly, giving him a few tests in London. Bonello said he concluded that MacKay was the right person for the role after two or three minutes following the tests. Variety also reported that the film would take place in Paris and California, would be shot in French and English, and that filming was scheduled to start in August 2022. Bonello said that the only thing he changed in the script after MacKay was cast was that he wrote the 1910 segment of the film half in French and half in English. On 4 September 2022, Léa Seydoux told Deadline that George MacKay learned French for the film and that filming would resume in late October.

In June 2023, Bonello said in an interview with French magazine Paris Match that The Beast is the film he is "the most proud of today".

Filming
Principal photography started in Paris on 22 August 2022. Filming also took place in Los Angeles without permission for a couple of nights. Filming wrapped in October 2022.

Post-production
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. He said it was because he wanted to evoke the "brutality" of old films that did not have end credits, and because it "fit well with the dehumanization of the film at that moment in 2044".

Release
Bonello told IndieWire that the film was rejected by the Cannes Film Festival.

The Beast had its world premiere at the 80th Venice International Film Festival on 3 September 2023. It had its North American premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. It was also invited at the 28th Busan International Film Festival in 'Gala Presentation' section and was screened on 6 October 2023. It was also selected to the Golden Spike competition of the 68th Valladolid International Film Festival.

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, and then pushed forward to 7 February 2024. It had a total of 88,273 entries in France during its theatrical run between February 7 and April 10.

Critical response
The Beast received an average grade of 3.7 out of 5 stars on the French website AlloCiné, based on 38 reviews.