The Beast - Lea Seydoux in French sci-fi

Movies
1

Ugh this movie was long, boring, and lame. Curse you metacritic! I will admit that I didn’t expect the second half of the film to be a lengthy exposition of the Isla Vista killer but I’m also pretty sure I didn’t need that to be in a film.

So this is a highly lauded French film set in 2044 where AI controls everything and they offer “purification” by eliminating traumas embedded in your DNA from past lives or some other such barely sketched nonsense. Lea relives her previous lives during the Paris flood of 1910 and as a struggling actress in Santa Barbara (? - - I’m curious if the film maker is aware of how far Santa Barbara is from LA) n 2014. And there’s one of the most leaden romances to ever hit the screen and some truly hamfisted attempts to shoehorn some commentary on contemporary social issues that doesn’t work at all.

I would be so curious to hear a Tom and Kellywand review of the film, but not sure it’s worth watching.

Lea Seydoux is awesome though.

2

Like, actual past lives, or some sort of psychological Lamarckism?

3

Actual past lives I believe, though the movie tries to cover its pseudoscience with ambiguity. And it’s not really important. This film is less sci-fi than Eternal Sunshine is. The sci-fi is just a MacGuffin, though I’m not sure there’s much else here. Maybe it’s MacGuffins all the way down. I know a film is bad when I check my watch several times during the showing.

4

Is she an assassin at any point?

5

There was a much-discussed study about this 10 or so years ago.

https://www.nature.com/articles/507022a

6

Sure, and I’m not going to deny the possibility of passing on acquired characteristics through epigenetic mechanisms, but this film does not posit that; these are very clearly intended to be past lives, not ancestors.