Listen to the audio version of the article
The beast conquers Venice: it surprises, fascinates and makes you think “La bête”, the new film by Bertrand Bonello in the running for the Golden Lion.
Set in a near future where artificial intelligence reigns supreme, the new film by the French director tells of a world where human emotions are now considered a threat. To get rid of it, Gabrielle must purify her DNA: she then immerses herself in previous lives, where she finds Louis, her great love.
It opens with a sequence set inside a set placed on a gigantic green screen, where the protagonist has to act imagining objects and characters which will then be added in post-production: right from the first minutes it is (also) a film about the cinema bête”, a widely stratified film, divided over several eras and in which points of view, narratives, styles and reasoning on the (post)human universe in which the feature film is set continue to multiply. Several references to the cinema of the past can be found ( from “Last year in Marienbad” by Alain Resnais to the poetics of Chris Marker) in this film freely inspired by the 1903 novel by Henry James “The Beast in the Jungle”, but Bonello still manages to be incredibly original, incisive and capable as much to reason as much as to worry about today’s world.
A great viewing experience
It is a real viewing experience, in which we viewers too get lost together with a protagonist who struggles to distinguish fictitious images and reality, digital and analogue world, past and present. It can be defined as a dystopian melodrama also because, like many of the best science fiction feature films in history, “La bête” is above all a great love film, in which one does nothing but search for one’s soul mate lost between times and spaces, computer screens and the necessity of true human contact. Yet another great performance by Léa Seydoux who confirms herself as one of the most important actresses in contemporary cinema.
The Killer
Also in competition was “The Killer”, the new film by David Fincher starring Michael Fassbender. The Irish actor plays a glacial assassin, who meticulously prepares each of his murders. While he is in Paris, during a very delicate operation, something goes wrong: he makes a mistake that could jeopardize his entire existence and also that of his loved ones. Opened by a wonderful incipit, which confirms the director of “Seven” and ” L’amore liar”, like one of the best and most significant authors of contemporary cinema, “The Killer” is a film that has a precise and highly calibrated staging. Equipped with perfect editing times, it proceeds very quickly throughout its duration, showing the gradual psychological collapse of an obsessive mind that has made a mistake. At the base there is a French graphic novel of the same name from 1998, used by Fincher as a narrative basis for a feature film that also shows the gradual social ascent accomplished by the protagonist with his murders.
Fincher has certainly done better in the past (given the not too original plot), but this does not detract from one of the most elegant and cinematically powerful titles seen on the big screen in recent times.