‘The Beast’ explores the heart of loneliness, in Los Angeles and beyond
Mark Olsen April 10, 2024
Combining elements of sci-fi, melodrama, horror and romance, The Beast takes place across three separate time periods to explore the intense loneliness and disconnection that has become a fixture of contemporary life.
Starring La Seydoux and George MacKay, the film follows two characters, Gabrielle and Louis, as they meet each other in 1910 Paris, 2014 Los Angeles and the AI-controlled future of 2044. Each time, circumstances keep them from connecting as fully as they
seem to
desire.
French writer-director Bertrand Bonello has woven this loose adaptation of Henry James 1903 novella The Beast in the Jungle into a
film movie
very much concerned with the issues of today.
The film It
premiered last fall at the Venice
International
Film Festival and is in theaters now.
I was very faithful to the
book in terms of the
argument of the book,
said says
Bonello
, 55, says
in a recent video interview from Paris. Then I wanted to be as unfaithful as I was faithful
,
and to explore these concepts of love and fear. They’re even more contemporary now than they used to be when he wrote the book. And so I wanted to mix the genres, to mix the period and to make
like
a cinematic trip.
Bonello has not yet had a major commercial breakthrough in the United States
, b
.
B
ut his adventurous storytelling previous films have included an examination of a Belle Epoque bordello
in
(House of Pleasures,), a portrait of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent
in
)
and a dissection of a group of young radicals
in
(Nocturama) has steadily gained popularity on the international festival circuit.
The Beast is Bonellos third collaboration with Seydoux, who now divides her time between Hollywood blockbusters like Dune: Part Two and No Time To Die and arthouse films such as Crimes of the Future and One Fine Morning. The cast also includes Saint Omer star Guslagie Malanda and actor, filmmaker and podcaster Dasha Nekrasova.
Bonello himself plays the voice of a director leading
the
2014
version
of Gabrielle
, an aspiring Los Angeles actor,
through
acting against
a green-screen
scene
in the films very first
scene moments
, strengthening the feeling that the film is in some part an exploration of Seydouxs own
screen
persona.
Dividing them Splitting the story
between time periods also create
ds
a deeper sense of how the main characters are the same people in different situations.
This is what I liked about the script, that it was the same character in three different periods, saysid Seydoux saidin a video call from Paris.
I wanted to be part of this adventure,”
says id Seydoux saidin a video call from Paris.
“When I choose a film, you never know what the film will be like
,
you can never be 100% sure of the result. But I was curious to live inside the film, not only as an actor, but
also
as a person. And its true that the character is also based on me in a way. I became like the subject of the film. And that was also like:
, w W
hy not?
It was something that was always specified from Bertrand that they are different people, but they are the same person,
said says Seydoux’s co-star
MacKay during a
Zoom call video call
from Los Angeles. And that kind of conundrum immediately I found exciting and challenging and enticing.
The questions that the film provokes are questions that I’m fascinated with
, w
: What’s at the core of your being, the core of your personality
,
?
said MacKay, and then how the context of a time, relationships, your interactions with the world outside of you, how that changes. And so this idea that these three people were essentially the same person, but it’s just that person in a different context that turns into something so wildly different, to me is fascinating. They make sense as the same man, but on the surface of it they couldn’t be more different.
The
Los Angeles L.A.
section of the story in particular is deeply unsettling, drawing inspiration from the videos of Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old who killed six people in Isla Vista before shooting himself in 2014. Gabrielle
, the struggling actor,is an aspiring actress who
is housesitting
at
a mansion in the Hollywood Hills. Alone in
the house an environment
of large windows that puts her constantly on display, she draws the attention of Louis, a lonely young
man incel
who posts angry screeds online full of self-pitying misogyny.
Bonello recall
ed s
first seeing a video of Rodger
some
years ago.
I was totally fascinated, and of course very shocked by what he had done, Bonello
says
. I remember precisely the words he used, the calm he had. It’s not a crazy video. It’s not like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, there is something very normal. And this freaked me out.
It was very difficult, to try to have an empathy with someone who says these terrible words,
said Bonello the director continues
.
It becomes a product of something terrible to behave like that.
And because of technology and social media and stuff like that, there is an impossibility to be yourself. So behind the psychopath, I had to find a way to have
an
empathy for him.
The production
only
shot in Los Angeles for
only
two days, enough time to get the nighttime shots of Gabrielle driving around town as Louis trails her. (Seydoux herself does not drive, so her scenes were shot with a car being pulled on a trailer.)
For this section of the film Bonello was influenced by the 1979 thriller “When a Stranger Calls” for its menacing atmosphere.
The glass-walled hillside mansion that Gabrielle housesits
is was
actually
a location
in the
S
outh of France.
The part of Louis was initially intended for the French actor Gaspard Ulliel, who starred in Bonellos 2014 Saint Laurent.
F But f
ollowing Ulliels untimely death in 2022
after in
a
tragic
skiing accident, Bonello decided to recast the part using a non-French actor to avoid comparisons
to with
what might have been.
British-born actor MacKay, best known for his role in 1917 and also recently seen in Femme, had to learn French for the role.
, with Bonello sprinkling in the use of English throughout.MacKay himselfHdrawn Sourcing
directly from Rodgers own videos,
he
shot his monologues
himself
,
drawn directly from Rodgers own videos,
using an outdated iPhone. The actor also
capturedwent off on his own to shoot
random images sand running through his fingers, a bowl of orange beads that wound up in the movie.
To be honest, I didn’t know about Elliot Rodger
, being in the UK and not being big online
, sa
ysid
MacKay. So in watching the videos, there were such specific things about his mannerisms that I wanted to
kind of
magpie and put into my performance. There was this kind of deeply self-conscious, rather thin bravado that was really quite acute. And something that I wouldnt have thought to do without having seen that
But that said, I kind of cherry-picked what was useful for myself and tried to entwine that with the key to Louis rather than it just being an exact portrayal of Elliot himself
.
MacKay recalls initially trying to do the first monologue near the Pacific Coast Highway but it proved impractical for recording sound.
Bonello said that the A
location with the downtown skyline looming dramatically behind MacKay
,
among the most striking images in the film
,
was ultimately chosen
, Bonello admits,
because it was convenient for parking.
Shots of M
a
cKays character driving around downtown show images along Broadway and passing by the Apple
Ss
tore in the renovated Tower Theatre. (Bonello sa
ys theseid all those
shots were stolen, captured with
out
permits.)
Moments where A scene in which
Seydoux exits a nightclub for the parking lot
were was
indicative of the patchwork of locations used to create the films
depiction of
Los Angeles.
The parking is in L.A.
,T t
he club is in Paris, explained Bonello.
Yet even shooting for just two nights in Los Angeles was still a thrill for the filmmaker
.
I really loved it because it’s like the history of cinema, Bonello sa
ysid
. When you arrive and you put your camera down, of course it reminds you so much. You’re in the heart of the cinema in a way
Bonello
estimates he
wrote some 30 drafts of the screenplay, more than he ever had before
on a project
. The structure of the film,
howwhen
it moves from one time period to the next
,
even when digital artifacts appear and the
film
footage itself seems to be
sufferingrespondingto
some technical glitch
,
was all planned in the screenplay. Bonello compare
d s
the process of writing as
pitched
somewhere between music and mathematics
in getting the structure just right
.
It was really one of the challenges and one of the starting desires of the film, said Bonello. It’s tricky to mix genres, so you have to put some love into the
[2014-set]
slasher
a
part. You have to put some fear into the melodrama. Writing
of
the film was really fascinating
,. It’s
like solving a mystery.
Working with
his
frequent cinematographer Jose Deshaies, Bonello shot the 1910 portion of the story in 35mm for a more sensual look, while the sharper and colder images of 2014 and 2044 were captured using digital. A sequence depicting the Paris flood of 1910 and a factory on fire was a particular challenge and found Bonello using storyboards to plan
the a
sequence for the first time in his career.
Seydoux found the films structure, bouncing between the deep past, recent past and the future,
to bring about a somehow
familiar
feeling
.
In my
life, in my
personal life, I’m always thinking about the future, the past
,
I’m always in my head, sa
ysid
Seydoux. I think that this is why I love to act. It allows me to be in the present.
I want this to be an experience.
I always feel that when you play a role, it’s always about yourself in a way. So it’s me but with different attitudes and different style.
The film One way the film’s style is genuinely unique is that it
does not have conventional end credits
, r
.
R
ather, once the story concludes, a QR code comes onscreen that leads viewers to an online site that has
all
the credits, as well as a brief bonus scene. This surprising moment is made even more unusual due to the fact that Bonello himself does not use a smartphone, sticking to an outdated
model of
Nokia
cellphone
. So he would not be able to see the end credits to his own film in a theater.
I thought it was a perfect ending to the film, sa
ysid
Bonello. It’s the relationship between technology and humanity, or technology and the loss of humanity. So to put a credit without even the names, I like the coldness of the end. You have this QR code, which has no feelings at all.
The
intercut
2044 section depicts a
scary
world controlled by AI. Yet that dystopian notion is no longer as far off as it might have once seemed. When the film premiered in Venice, Seydoux and MacKay did not attend due to the
n
ongoing actor
s
s
strike, which was in part driven by conflict over the need for AI protections.
The irony was not lost on us, said MacKay. At the time of filming, it felt like something that was sci-fi,
it felt
like the future, and now it feels so in the moment. It’s quite scary to be honest.
Bonello purposefully set the future section of the film 20 years ahead so that the world could be different, but
also
not entirely so. Yet he
was still says he’s
surprised by how quickly opinions
on the world
of AI ha
s ve
changed
just
since he started working on the film.
When I started to work on the film, I worked with a researcher in AI and, so
I was aware of many things, the dangers, the ethical problems, the moral problems, the political problems, sa
ysid
Bonello. I thought it would be in 10 years, not the year the film was shown
It went quicker
.
I find it a little more scary now because I can relate it much more to reality, said Bonello.
I think I made a mistake by putting it in 2044 2029, maybe.
For the actors, that sense of an encroaching shift in how people interact often felt like it was already here.
In 2014, she’s doesn’t have any real human interactions, sa
ysid
Seydoux. And it’s one of the subjects of the film, the fact that she’s very lonely.
It’s a very contemporary thing, with all our devices and we want to connect with people through social media and everything.
, said Seydoux.
But at the end, this feeling of loneliness is even stronger. It’s so hard to have real interactions with people.
MacKay agrees that their goal was emotion.
“Despite the root of there being a fear and an existential, kind of cerebral quality to the whole film, I think it also was really important to me that that it is also about love, sa
ysid
MacKay. It was always important to me that it wasn’t more head than heart, but of course it’s kind of both.
All of which is what makes The Beast one of the most achingly human films of the year so far
. W w
hether that year is 1910, 2014, 2044 or indeed 2024.
