Not as arresting or visually stunning as Cloud Atlas, but another sci-fi with multiple storylines separated by time. Our The Beast review:
Most filmmakers will never need to locate the rhythm in cross-cutting between multiple time periods separated by a half-century or more and augmented by sometimes-obtuse sci-fi concepts; it simply isn’t a common occurrence outside of movies like. Not as good, not as arresting, not as visually stunning, but nonetheless a sort-of-humanist, sort-of-sci-fi story that places its leading actors in multiple storylines taking place decades or more apart.
If you’re going to watch an actress for a century-plus, however, Léa Seydoux is a solid choice. She plays Gabrielle, a woman in 2044 who is prodded into having her DNA “purified,” a common procedure in a world where artificial intelligence has rendered human employment largely obsolete. People can re-enter the workforce by having their memories and emotions more or less purged, rendering them closer to employable automatons.
This works to sustain tension in the moment, but leaves the movie feeling distended and misshapen. This could well be intentional; rather than knocking off the endless propulsion of something like, Bonello may want to keep audiences a different kind of alert, uncertain of how or where they will be allowed to linger.
Despite Seydoux’s uniquely magnetic ennui – could any other contemporary actress imbue a beautifully bored model with such empathy? — and MacKay’s gameness to bring a little nuance to a real creep in the 2014 section,has an undercurrent of restlessness, maybe even listlessness. The engine that should be shuttling it between time periods sometimes goes idle, and it becomes, especially for many of its early passages, an opaque curiosity.
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