Lucy Broadhurst (Lisbeth Hummel) and Mathurin D'Esperance (Pierre Bendetti) are to be married. It's an unusual arrangement by modern standards: They have never met and only corresponded by letter and the ceremony must be conducted by Cardinal De Balo.
Pierre's uncle – the Cardinal's brother – worries that the marriage would not be good for his diffident, borderline imbecile nephew who seems more interested in watching his horses copulate than his own impending nuptials, and does his best to stall the wedding. In response Pierre's father, who is keen to get his hands on the Broadhurst's money, blackmail's the wheelchair-bound old man by threatening to reveal that he poisoned his wife.
In the meantime, the wedding preparations continue. The parish priest arrives with his teen proteges/lovers to baptise Mathurin, while, in between bedding the servant Ifany, Mathurin's sister Clarisse (Pascale Rivault) "borrows" a page and bridesmaid.
As the two families meet one another in the flesh for the first time, Lucy inquires about the rumours the chateau is haunted by a monster. The Duc De Balo shows Lucy the herbarium that once belonged to the source of the legend, Romilda D'Esperance , which contains a sketch of the beast, and Romilda's corset, which is covered in claw marks. Pierre, however, is dismissive – "Stupid tales ladies. Don't believe a word."
Nonetheless, something about the strange atmosphere of the place clearly gets to Lucy. That night she has an extraordinarily vivid dream:
A young noblewoman (Sirpa Lane) – Romilda, we may assume – sits by the window playing the keyboard. Outside are a lamb and its mother.
This pastoral idyll is soon interrupted by bestial growls. Like Little Bo Peep, Romilda goes to investigate. In the woods around the chateau she discovers the remains of the lamb and the beast, a black furred, bearlike creature with a prominent erection. In the chase Romilda loses all her clothes except her corset (its cords giving the appearance of a tail) before she is finally run down.
As the beast ravishes Romilda her initial "no, no" swiftly transforms to "yes, yes" as she and the beast pleasure one another in myriad ways before it expires, exhausted…
The genesis of The Beast began with writer-director Walerian Borowczyk's anthology film Immoral Tales the dialogue-free Romilda sequence having originally being slated for inclusion there.
Reframing and recontextualising the short necessarily gives it a different meaning. The two stories work well together, allowing for a multi-layered examination of the themes of duality and binary opposition – male/female, active/passive, culture/nature, hairy/smooth, master/slave, dark/light, Christian/pagan, reproductive/non-reproductive sexuality and, above all man/animal ("We poor humans are like animals, subject to the laws of nature") – arguably impossible within the immoral tales format, while the status of the Romilda sequence is rendered ambiguous by the doubling of key aural and visual motifs – Romilda's corset, Domenico Scarlatti's music – and locations between reality and dream/flashback.
Though the extensive scenes of nudity and softcore action are clearly presented for the visual pleasure of the male spectator, The Beast is also one of those erotic/pornographic entries that goes some way towards problematising gender relations and sexuality. At a base level, there's the fascination/repulsion inherent in watching two horses go at it and of close ups of their genitalia. At a more sophisticated level it's the way in which, in both stories, it is the female figure who proves more capable of surviving desire, passion being represented in somewhat Schopenhauerian terms as a blind, uncaring, impersonal force that exerts itself over – and makes a mockery of – the individual's self-identity, acting through but not in any sense for them in its disregard for their broader interests and well-being.
Even if Borowcyzk's detractors will likely see speculations such as these as desperate attempts to find intellectual value and justification in a mere piece of (s)exploitation, one would hope that they can also concede the film-maker was also at least something of an artist, capable of producing films with considerable aesthetic appeal.
Noveau Pictures' Region 2 DVD of the Beast arrives with some cuts. These are not, however, (External) what you might expect : all of the sexual material is present intact, only some dramatic scenes having been excised. The presentation itself is more than adequate, being a solid transfer with minimal damage – something of a surprise compared to the badly beaten-up print of Blanche that I saw in the cinema – and forceful, vibrant colours. The audio is clear, though the burning in of the subtitles for the French language parts is a slight negative.
Away from a brief stills gallery and profile of Borowczyk there's only one extra, but it is a good one: The short The Tide , the first entry in Immoral Tales. It's the story of a 20-year-old youth – our narrator – who compels his less experienced 16-year-old cousin to fellate him as the tide rises around them. In other words, it's another examination of the sex/power nexus and further ammunition for the thesis that Borowczyk was something more than just a pornographer – even if that something might be an unusually classy artistic/literary approach.
Finally, Thierry "concrete cock" Bourdon is listed in the credits. Who does he play – the beast?
Copyright © K H Brown 2002-2005
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