La bête (1975)

User Rating:

5.9/10   

Director:

Walerian Borowczyk

Writer:

Walerian Borowczyk (writer)

Release Date:

15 April 1977 (USA)

Genre:

Drama | Fantasy | Horror | Mystery | Romance

Plot:

The head of a failing French family thinks that fate has smiled down on him when the daughter of a wealthy man agrees to be married to his son...

Plot Keywords:

Female Frontal Nudity | Breasts | Nudity | Foot Fetish | Female Nudity

Cast

Sirpa Lane	...	Romilda de l'Esperance
Lisbeth Hummel	...	Lucy Broadhurst
Elisabeth Kaza	...	Virginia Broadhurst
Pierre Benedetti	...	Mathurin de l'Esperance
Guy Tréjan	...	Pierre de l'Esperance
Roland Armontel	...	Priest
Marcel Dalio	...	Duc Rammendelo De Balo (as Dalio)
Robert Capia	...	Roberto Capia
Pascale Rivault	...	Clarisse De l'Esperance
Hassane Fall
Anna Baldaccini
Thierry Bourdon
Mathieu Rivollier
Julien Hanany
Marie Testanière

Also Known As:

Death's Ecstacy (USA) (censored version)
The Beast (USA)
The Beast in Heat

Runtime:

93 min | Australia:98 min (1977 cinema release)

Country:

France

Language:

French | Italian

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Sweden:15 | Sweden:15 (uncut) | Australia:R (2007) (uncut) | New Zealand:R18 | New Zealand:(Banned) (2002) | Australia:R (original rating) | France:-16 | Netherlands:18 | UK:18 | USA:X

Company:

Argos Films

Movie Connections:

Edited into Caligula et Messaline (1981)

Over Rated Movie About A Guy Getting A Haircut

Nope, I am just not going to get with it here. I refuse to go along with the program. Don't you supposed that perhaps this movie is just a tad over-rated? Look at the reader comments and their star ratings: Most are 6/10, 7/10 or better. I think this is an instance when the ratings may say more about the people rendering them than the movie itself, which is unique. How many other sex fantasies about simulated bestiality complete with horse couplings have become mainstream hits as catalog DVD titles? I watched this movie with a pervading sense of anticipation, expecting fireworks, and instead got someone popping a Gucci shopping bag. It looked great, but once the thrill had been spent even the twist ending didn't do much to save it.

The film's background story says it all: Director films about 25 minutes of borderline hardcore fake bestial sex for another movie, is informed the footage will not be appropriate, sets it aside, waits two or three years for a smattering of critical acclaim to build up, then constructs an entire feature around that 25 minutes, filming roughly 70 minutes of otherwise unrelated, excruciatingly boring footage and inserting the 25 minute chunk in as a dream sequence. That the 25 minutes of film in question is strikingly odd, original and shocking in a deliberate, calculated manner goes without saying. But we aren't here to evaluate that 25 minutes alone, we must consider the entire film, and ask ourselves why people are so enthusiastic about the movie? Or are they just enamored by it's background story and history of having been banned by people who were stupid enough to be offended by it?

Perhaps it is an anti-clerical agenda that appeals to them. Hating the western religions of catholicism and Christianity is one of the few remaining socially acceptable bastions of intolerance -- Just today it was revealed that the BBC routinely skews their broadcasts with anti Christian & anti Western sentiment in the furtherance of political correctness. You can say anything you want about the Bible, pedopheliac priests, the institutionalized cruelty of the church, and how much white men and their inhuman religions suck the dimpled skin off a golf ball ... But say one negative thing about the Koran or the intimidation of all other religions by Islam and you are toast. This movie was tailor made for such a sentiment, with a wrinkly old dried up priest who has an entirely unwholesome on screen relationship with two pretty 14 year old French boys complete with inappropriate touching, fawning, fondling, fumbling, groping, and patting of the backsides. Ewww.

And then there is the horse couplings, photographed in such fetishistic closeup detail that portions of the film could be used as visual aids for a biology class on animal husbandry. Yes I understand the thematic relevance of the imagery -- large animal phallus's with a wealth of reproductive fluids just waiting to be unleashed like fire extinguishers -- but if I wanted to watch horses, you know, do it, I would like go live on a farm. Having their genitals in my face is about as entertaining as watching someone use a bathroom.

Is this movie just a sort of artsy diversion for social deviants? Probably, though I will grant the artistic execution of most of it, filmed in a kind of arty Euro detail that even has a dappled forest pond right out of a Monet painting, complete with a spanning arched bridge. And the ending (which even I managed to be surprised by) does sort of wrap it all up into a neat if distasteful package. But you have to remember that there are certain things that cannot be deconstructed for their design elements and many artists are guilty for exploiting them in their work to lend a sort of gravitas that would not have been achieved without it. That isn't fair, and even Clint Eastwood has fallen prey to the urge with his new movie about Iwo Jima. Whether or not his film is any good stands as a separate consideration from whether or not that battle was a noble cause fought by men who were heroes. The problem is that most people will not be able to separate out the two aspects of the movie and will be lining up to give it Oscars because of it's noble message -- not because it is a particularly good or original movie.

While it may seem like an odd parallel, I see one with THE BEAST: How can anyone not see the basic beauty of nature in the sight of two horses mating? And who cannot see the logical culmination of the repressed sexuality from fairy tales in the film's explosive set-piece where Beauty and the Beast finally do the nasty? Somehow I managed to miss both points, and am delighted that I have seen this film so that I can trash it as being what it really is: 25 minutes or so of eye opening over the top adult fairy tale imagery surrounded by 70 minutes of skull drainingly boring artsy-fartsy Euro Trash dreck about some guy getting a haircut, and a great ending. It's art for sure, but it sucks hard.

3/10