'The Beast' review: Léa Seydoux, George MacKay endure pain over time

Twenty years in the future, humans can get rid of all their painful memories by submerging themselves in a bath of black goo and having a machine arm stick a pin in their ear to wipe their subconscious clean.

One hundred years in the past, two lovers meet in Paris and begin a dance through time.

And somewhere in the present, a model and an incel are about to collide in a deadly stalker fantasy brought to life.

These are the parallel worlds that writer-director Bertrand Bonello brings together, or at least attempts to, in the ambitious but fractured "The Beast," a riff on a 1903 Henry James novella that has flashes of remarkable atmosphere but has trouble congealing into a cohesive whole.

Léa Seydoux and "1917's" George MacKay play the two characters, destined to each other through the years, though their connections play out in very different circumstances. In 1910, Gabrielle (Seydoux) and Louis (MacKay) are drawn to one another at a party and their connection is undeniable, although Gabrielle is already spoken for. The city's great flood plays a key role here and lends their story a devastating coda.

Things eventually pick up in 2014 Los Angeles, where Gabby is a model housesitting in a wealthy man's lavish home, and Louis is an angry virgin determined to take out his revenge on an unfortunate soul, who happens to be Gabby. A future thread, set in a volatile 2044 where emotions are a liability, pairs Gabrielle with an A.I. bot (Guslagie Malanda), to further elaborate on Bonello's themes of humanity and disconnection over time.

Several motifs appear and re-appear through the decades — psychics, pigeons, dolls, a knife on a table — as Bonello riffs on or alludes to Harmony Korine (clips from "Trash Humpers" appear as inescapable pop-up ads on a computer) and David Lynch (the Los Angeles chapter unfolds somewhere between "Mulholland Drive" and "Twin Peaks"). He's playing with big picture ideas of destiny, longing and emotion in a fractured, unabashedly unsentimental arthouse space, and the L.A. scenes are tense and chilling. But "The Beast" is often stilted and disjointed in a way that doesn't help its case. What it's missing is connection.

agraham@detroitnews.com

'The Beast'

GRADE: C

Not rated: Adult themes

146 minutes

In theaters