La Bête

 

French cinema polymath Bertrand Bonello's La Bête (The Beast) is a bilingual / time- and continent-leaping science fiction romance that is enjoyed best when reflecting on its many intriguing ideas and less as a single statement on identity, attachment and isolation.

It's a gorgeous but challenging work that will no doubt frustrate the impatient with its serpentine narrative structure that provides context and background to understand the characters or events only sparingly.

The wonderful French actress Léa Seydoux stars as Gabrielle, a young woman in a future world who appears to be exploring her options in a society that has little room for humans with "affect" (emotions) and offers limited employment possibilities because unemotional AI make better, unbiased decisions.

A disembodied counselor places Gabrielle in different virtual scenarios in different time periods -- pianist wife of a Victorian doll maker, contemporary fashion model -- to see if she is a likely candidate for realignment as a quasi-automaton, which would enhance her usefulness.

In these various virtual worlds, and there have been many, she meets a young man named Louis (George MacKay), whose purpose is not entirely certain even though his presence in her lives is clearly intentional.

The chemistry between these two attractive people -- whose verbal exchanges often shift from French to English and back again -- is palpable, and the passion that builds over the course of the picture is intense.