La Bête

LA BÊTE, Bertrand Bonello’s astonishing sci-fi drama, is a thrilling journey of the mind staged with visionary élan. Loosely adapting the Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle (1903), Bonello tells the ill-fated story of Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) and Louis (George MacKay), which is reconfigured over three points in time and space: Paris in 2044, in Los Angeles in 2014 and Paris once again in 1910. A dark cloud looms over the heroine’s troubled soul from the outset. In a near-future world dominated by AI where productivity is everything, she is restless, emotional and thus sub-optimal. Cleansing her “DNA” ofers an apparent solution, whereby she is transported through a time portal where she experiences fragments of her past lives, which are deleted from her mind in the process. Gabrielle first meets Louis in 1910, who captures her heart and spirit, as a powerful bond is forged, full of melancholy and eternal longing. A poignant quest for deeper connection, LA BÊTE follows two lovers who will never live out their mutual attraction. As we move with them from one epoch to the next, like in a hall of broken mirrors where memory and feelings merge into exciting but painful experiences, we realise that everything human is doomed to vanish. (Maria Giovanna Vagenas)

In the presence of Bertrand Bonello.