— Not too emotional, so it will please everyone.
What if Olivier Assayas smashed together Sally Potter's Orlando (1992), David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001) and his own Demonlover (2002)? You get The Beast, one of those films that is both over- and under-explained at the same time. The broader thesis of the text is left unspoken, yet along the way it insists that the viewer grasps some quite obvious concepts such as the repetition of the dolls across all of the timelines ("You're a doll!") and the alleged 'meaning' of the pigeon. What's more, the production design and costumery of the future strained credulity to me, as did the laughable internet scenes from 2014. The internet was genuinely usable ten years ago! Curiously, George MacKay was least effective in this particular timeline despite the script often verbatim quoting from Elliot Rodger's manifesto. What should have added an unsettling paratextual verisimilitude was handled especially cack-handedly, leading to a distancing "How Do You Do, Fellow Incels?" effect rather than a contemporary and unsettling Inland Empire (2006) -like vibe. The Beast is nothing but engaging, but I'm not sure it really added up to much.
The Beast has an undercurrent of restlessness, maybe even listlessness. The engine that should be shuttling it between time periods sometimes goes idle, and it becomes, especially for many of its early passages, an opaque curiosity. The absences Bonello seems interested in – there’s an evocative recurrence of Gabrielle shooting a project via green screen – threaten to overtake the film. “Can you get scared by something that’s not actually here?” someone asks at one point. Certainly you can. It may be harder, though, to be transported by the same.
— Jesse Hassenger (Paste Magazine)
Somehow, it all manages to be both confusing and compelling, romantic and cerebral. Call it bizarre, as Gabrielle says to Louis when the two find themselves in their favorite, now inexplicably empty, nightclub. Yes, it is bizarre, Louis agrees. But, he adds, in an unintentional assessment of the film itself, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
— Michael O'Sullivan (The Washington Post)
The reflexive skepticism—bordering on antagonism—with which [David Foster] Wallace (and other contemporary critics such as Roger Ebert) treated Lynch speaks to one experience of Bonello’s cinema, which at times suggests a montage of stylish surfaces with little behind them but an affirmation of the viewer’s omnivorous good taste. Part of this skepticism has to do with a suspicion of outsiders: Lynch as the art-school interloper bringing tormented images into the mainstream, or Bonello as a slumming tourist within his assembled worlds[.]
— Brendan Boyle (Los Angeles Review of Books)
Synopsis: In the near future where emotions have become a threat, Gabrielle finally decides to purify her DNA in a machine that will immerse her in her past lives and rid her of any strong feelings. She then meets Louis and feels a powerful connection, as if she had known him forever.