Spanning three different eras, “The Beast” stars Lea Seydoux and George MacKay as lovers searching for fulfillment. Truly this is the week for future shock — darkly compelling visions of a near-future that humankind can only interpret as a rejection letter, or a comeuppance for its determined lack of disaster prevention and preparedness.has some far-out company, in other words. Now at the Music Box Theatre, cowriter-director Bertrand Bonello’s “The Beast” imagines a world 20 years hence.
In her previous selves Gabrielle was a celebrated pianist in the time of the momentous Paris flood , then a struggling actress adrift in Los Angeles . In each of the film’s three intertwined eras, her passionate artist’s heart belongs to the same man, Louis . Like Gabrielle, he undergoes wholesale personality and destiny makeovers in each time frame. Yet a pervasive fear of imminent catastrophe prevents Gabrielle from seizing the day, and the life she truly wants.
Bonello treats his layer cake of a movie as an occasion for a layering of genres. I found the 2014 LA narrative the least interesting, though certainly tension-building, since MacKay’s 2014 Louis is modeled afterFor roughly 40 minutes of “The Beast,” we’re watching a virtual standalone thriller, with Gabrielle housesitting in a swank, cold glass domicile just begging for voyeurs, or worse.
“AI has become responsible and fair,” the 2044 Gabrielle is told by her unseen job interviewer, not human. Then, he adds: “And so.” “The Beast” doesn’t need much in the way of digital imagery to create a strange new world; it’s enough to make Gabrielle audition for a phone commercial in a green-screen sound stage at the beginning , where she pretends to see things she can only imagine.