TIFF '23: Love! Sex!! Cinema!!!
Monday, September 11, 2023 at 8:02PM 
"The Beast"
So far at TIFF '23, no film has more stubbornly remained in my thoughts than Bertrand Bonello's The Beast, an ambitious genre-bending experiment with shades of Henry James' "The Beast in the Jungle" and incel rhetoric. You can't fault the French maverick for a lack of ideas, but I'm not sure they all coalesce. Still, it persists in the upper levels of my mind, nagging for reconsideration, spiking me with lost images I saw projected monument-like on an IMAX screen. Truthfully, I've never been as intimately acquainted with Léa Seydoux's face, and at times, she looked like a beautiful titan about to devour the audience, mayhap the whole universe.
The Beast's thoughts on love across the ages are especially fascinating in how they compare to other artists' visions of the amorous realm. The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed and Fallen Leaves couldn't be more different, so let's talk all three after the jump...