This is an oddly constructed reincarnation AI romance film (you probably won't hear that every day). Based loosely on the Henry James novella, The Beast in the Jungle, director Bertrand Bonello sets our present in 2044 where Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) must decide between getting a better job or keeping her emotions. You see, Artificial Intelligence has saved humanity from an unnamed disaster and is now running things, perfectly but dispassionately.
The offer to 'clean her DNA' would remove her 'affects', or memories, thus enabling her to undertake work tasks logically, free of emotional influence. Through this process we see two earlier incarnations of Gabrielle - in 1910 Paris, and 2014 Los Angeles. In a none too subtle hint early on, Gabrielle mentions to someone that she doesn't want to become a Buddhist - maybe she had no choice, as it appears her DNA is 'remembering' things and carrying her experiences through time.
Seydoux shimmers in each time period and does the heavy lifting in helping the audience go along with the sometimes puzzling storyline. The object of her hopeful affections is Louis (George MacKay), yet he's as changeable in each setting as she is untransmutable. In 1910, he openly loves her, while she demurs. In 2014, he's a murderous incel who blames her for his lack of love. And in 2044, he's keen but perhaps the idea of a better job overrides his passions. Mackay is fine throughout (apparently, he even learnt French for the role) but he takes a backseat to Seydoux, it's her story and she makes the most of it.
The common throughline for Gabrielle is the fear of an unstoppable beast, something that is inevitable and chilling. I read this as her fear of losing her identity, of having no emotions after the 'cleaning', but the film's climax, and an interview with Bonello add more detail. He says:
"...this beast is simply the fear of loving, of abandoning oneself, of being damaged, of losing one's footing, of being devastated, a fear that I think we can all relate to. And this fear infuses all eras. The film may span three periods, three worlds and six characters, but it tells a single story."
The three timelines are woven together neatly enough until the 2014 edition takes over around two thirds of the way in. Here the film becomes a bit stretched, a bit baggy, though no less intriguing. It just seemed to lose a bit of steam, and the character of Louis was a little excessive, I thought. The 2044 stuff is fantastic - face masks for outdoors (but not for the wild animals wandering the Parisian streets), 'Baron Harkonnen' oil baths, humanistic nanny dolls, a mint nightclub that changes its name for the era of music, there was even an audible gasp in the cinema when a friend of Gabrielle's 'cures' her cat. The whole premise of AI giving humans the choice to clean their DNA is pretty chilling.
There are recurring elements in each episode. Dolls - a talking toy in 2014, the aforementioned nanny in 2044 and a bunch of creepy porcelain and celluloid ones in 1910. Pigeons appear inside houses, signifying future death. And fortune tellers play an important, sometimes scary, part. Emotions cleave a wedge through all timelines, differing slightly in their manifestations. Here's Bonello again:
"You could say that in the film, in 1910, feelings are expressed. In 2014, they are repressed. In 2044, they are suppressed."
Interestingly, this devolution of emotions isn't usually discussed in films - is it possible that people expressed their feelings more in Ye Olde Days? What about the hippies? Gabrielle's emotional disasters are mirrored in society, for example, Paris under water (which actually happened) is fascinating to see. Over to Bonello (he's doing a lot of work in this review):
"Each time, the personal catastrophe is linked to a general one: the Paris flood in 1910, a kind of behavioral amnesia linked to social networks and the Internet in 2014, and the even worse catastrophe of a world without catastrophe in 2044."
A world without catastrophe. This is part of what Gabrielle is afraid of, and the crux of the film. Bonello has an idiosyncratic style (see the opening blocking of Seydoux against a green screen) and he really knows how to tell a story. It's not perfect, it could be tighter and there's an overriding sense of the ridiculous, but it's one of those films that has grown on me since I saw it. I've been adding half stars incrementally for a couple of days now.
The Beast opens at the Luna on May 30th.
See also:
There are elements of Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001), and even Andrew Niccol's Gattaca (1997).
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