‘The Beast’ Will Live Stream on Criterion Channel in July — Watch Bertrand Bonello Talk the Film’s Green Screen Opening

Ryan Lattanzio
·3 min read

One of the best films of 2024 so far, Bertrand Bonello’s “The Beast” is premiering on the Criterion Channel this summer, and IndieWire has the exclusive details.

First, the scary and ambitious sci-fi romance, starring Léa Seydoux and George MacKay as doomed lovers across centuries, will debut as a live-streaming event on July 28. Then, the film will join Criterion Channel’s streaming library on August 1. The Criterion Channel similarly debuted the Ryuichi Sakamoto documentary “Opus” as a live stream earlier this summer. Released in theaters by Sideshow/Janus Films this past April, “The Beast” premiered at the 2023 Venice Film Festival.

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Seydoux leads Bonello’s extraordinary epic as Gabrielle in three timelines: First, in Belle époque Paris in 1910, then in a recognizable 2014 Los Angeles, then in a sterile post-pandemic, AI-controlled future somewhere in 2044. In this free adaptation of Henry James’ novella “The Beast in the Jungle,” Gabrielle is terrorized by the impossibility of love with a man played by George MacKay — in the film’s LA midstretch, he plays an incel modeled after Elliot Rodger. In 2044, Seydoux’s character submits to a process that promises to rid her of emotions to make her a more productive member of society. It fails. In the near-present-day period, she’s an aspiring Hollywood actress, and the film’s opening finds her acting entirely in front of a green screen for a chaos-fueled cell phone commercial.

That performance — a tricky feat of acting amid a green-screen void that Seydoux previously told IndieWire she had little prior experience with — is then repeated in a real location in the film’s chilling finale. Bonello talks about that sequence in an exclusive clip from Criterion Channel’s “Meet the Filmmakers” segment, which will be available to stream alongside the August 1 release, below.

Bonello, whose past films include “Nocturama” and “House of Tolerance,” told IndieWire back at Venice last year that he modeled the green-screen scene on testimonies he’s picked up from fellow filmmakers who worked on big-budget movies.

“For me, the prologue was a way to say, OK, there is going to be something virtual in the film, not virtual in the sense of images, but virtual in a wider sense. It’s also a way to say, OK, my subject is Gabrielle, because she’s so alone on the green screen, and also say, my second subject is Léa Seydoux, because the film becomes a documentary on her,” Bonello said. “She’s shot on every side. In many scenes, especially in 2014 and 2044, she’s alone in front of screens, in this house in L.A., and in 2044, even when she talks with her friends or people, it’s just voices. For many days, I just had a camera and Léa and a location.”

The live stream of “The Beast” on Criterion Channel will take place Sunday, July 28 at 5 p.m. PT/ p.m. ET. Then, the film will stream for whenever you want to watch it beginning Thursday, August 1. Watch an excerpt from Criterion’s “Meet the Filmmakers” interview with Bonello below.

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