The Beasts is deeply moving, monstrously unsettling, and uncannily inevitable. Rodrigo Sorogoyen delivers a tale in two halves, asking the question: when the male ego explodes, who is left to rebuild from the wreckage?
★★★★✰
The Beasts unfolds like a slow-motion car crash. Within the first few frames, we know exactly where this is heading, but perhaps not where it will end. This unerring inevitability does nothing to detract from the power of the film, however, as it is not the specific human acts within which the horror manifests that are important. Instead, it is the inertia gained by the accumulation of seemingly trivial actions and events that conspire together to lead us past the event horizon of degeneration into beasthood. Director/writer Rodrigo Sorogoyen excels at portraying these moments and the characters who live through them, with meticulously framed camera work, crisp cinematography, and stellar acting forming a tripod upon which this narrative exploration of ego and xenophobia unfolds.
The clock starts ticking when French couple Antoine (Denis Ménochet) and Olga (Marina Foïs) decide to vote against the construction of a new windfarm, which in their eyes would spoil the nature of the quaint little Galician hamlet they now call home. This decision is much to the chagrin of some of the locals. Most aggrieved are the Antas brothers, Xan (Luis Zahera) and Lorenzo (Diego Anido), for whom the development represents perhaps their only opportunity for a second life—the very thing Antoine and Olga have come here to find.
The idea that this could be ‘home’ to Antoine comes like a spit in the eye for Xan and Lorenzo. Home? He just woke up here. For The Beasts, prejudice is a two-way street. Xenophobia is rife, but despite his best efforts to integrate into the community, the hallmark of innocence still eludes Antoine. The whiff of class scorn, however faint, is not redacted from the narrative. In one of several exceptional long takes, Antoine is seen quizzing the brothers on what they would do if he did change his vote and grant them their riches, as though only in the circumstance that their dreams meet his moral criteria will he allow them the opportunity to be realised. This is an especially impressive scene when you consider the sensitivity that is required to tell a story that is based on real events. The Beasts dramatises a conflict from the 2010s when a Dutch couple moved to Galicia from the Netherlands and fell out with locals over sustainability and grazing rights.
Throughout The Beasts, Alejandro De Pablo’s cinematography is consistently lush, concisely framing the numerous Chekhov’s gun establishing shots and providing the perfect backdrop for those tension-building long takes. You can’t really blame Olga and Antoine for deciding to begin their second lives in a place that looks this good, even when the delight of their pastoral eden is submerged in so much menace. A deliciously unsettling score is key to conveying this duality, exposing the vitriolic human conflict coursing beneath the rural vistas.
If it were not for the absolutely immense performances that accompanied them, Sorogoyen’s emphasis on long takes and extended close-ups would lose much of their power. Fortunately, the casting is exceptional, with Zahera and Foïs the particular standouts. This is not to detract from the brilliant Menochet however. The task of executing perhaps the point of greatest tension is handed to Marie Colomb, a relative newcomer playing the role of Antoine and Olga’s adult daughter. Within what would appear externally as an entirely innocuous scene at a livestock auction, lies an immense sense of threat. Focused close-ups and blurred movement in the periphery make for a claustrophobic crescendo. In this moment, as throughout The Beasts, Antoine, Olga, and Marie are never sure what is going to happen to them. What they can be sure of though, is that the threat is real. What more can these men take from you? The answer is, always, everything.
With a tale told in two halves and from three perspectives, Sorogoyen presents a gendered take on conflict resolution. With the first two acts of The Beasts dominated by the rampancy of the male ego, it is only when the female characters are afforded the space to breathe and the agency to act that any hope of a resolution is ever in sight. Of course, by that point, it’s already too late. It is slightly ironic then, that perhaps the only thing holding The Beasts back from faultlessness, is the limited screen time that Sorogoyen affords two of his most enigmatic cast members: Foïs and Colomb.
The Verdict
The Beasts isn’t hiding any surprises, but it never pretends to. The power here is always in its inevitability. Foreshadowed by its very first frames, Sorogoyen leads us along a not-so-merry path down into the darkest recesses of human nature. With a narrative framed by stunning cinematography, accompanied by a taut and unnerving score, and delivered by a faultless cast, Sorogoyen has produced something equal to, if never quite more than, the sum of its excellent parts.
Words by Rory Jamieson
The Beasts will release in UK cinemas from 24th March 2023, and is available on Curzon Home Cinema.
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