La Bête (The Beast)
2023
*½
Director: Bertrand Bonello
Cast: Léa Seydoux, George MacKay, Guslagie Malanda, Dasha Nekrasova, Martin Scali, Elina Löwensohn, Marta Hoskins, Julia Faure, Kester Lovelace, Félicien Pinot
In an AI-controlled future, Gabrielle agrees to undergo a process which suppresses her emotions. During the procedure, she revisits her past lives where she shares a profound connection with a man named Louis. Bertrand Bonello's painfully boring, romantically flavoured science fiction drama presents a poorly explained dystopian future inhabited by two of the most uninteresting people imaginable. The concept of the same person living at different points in history is familiar from other unsuccessful films, such as Being Human, Cloud Atlas, and The Fountain. It's ironic that a story about multiple lives features such lifeless characters, and what makes matter worse is that we have to spend 145 minutes in their company.
