THE BEAUTIFUL BEAST (2006)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *naturalistic*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

For my review of this Canadian psychodrama I'm just going to plunge into a summation before drawing any conclusions. So: SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

Wealthy widow Louise (Carole Laure) lives on an isolated estate with her grown son Patrice (Marc-Andre Grondin) and grown daughter Isabelle-Marie (Caroline Dhavernas); the same estate where the siblings’ late father drowned in a lake and where Patrice indulges in his one hobby, riding his horse. Both Louise and Patrice are very glamorous while Isabelle-Marie is comparatively plain, and the younger woman's insecurities about her looks seem to be aggravated by the way Louise lets Patrice sleep in her bed. There’s no evidence that mother and son are having sex, partly because Patrice seems withdrawn to the point of helplessness (which could indicate molestation in other circumstances). Still, Isabelle-Marie fantasizes that they’re making "the beast with two backs" (my term) and further imagines the two of them being slain by a horse-headed messenger of death. Later she ogles Patrice when he’s naked and eventually jerks him off when he’s bathing, though he doesn't seem to understand what's happening.

Louise departs to go to a funeral and leaves Isabelle-Marie in charge. The girl abuses Patrice by depriving him of food, twisting his ear and confining him to his room. Louise, who has already sensed that things are getting out of her control, brings back with her a new boyfriend Lanz and announces that they plan to be married. Neither Patrice nor Isabelle-Marie take to Lanz, but the entrance of a new male in the house seems to jolt the sister out of her competition for her brother. 

She attends a party, meets a young fellow named Michael, and eventually gets knocked up but does not get married. While she’s away having her child the jealous Patrice runs down Lanz with his horse, killing him. While Isabelle-Marie is having her baby, she sees a vision of the horse-headed killer watching her, suggesting that on some subconscious level she knows that the killer she imagined is the masculine nature of Patrice, whose sexual feelings she played with. 

Louise evidently allows the authorities to deem the murder an accident, since for the next four years she and her son live together. Patrice seems possessive of his mother but there’s still no evidence that they have sex, though Patrice looks very pleased with himself for having ousted his rival. Louise develops a cancerous growth on her face, marring the beauty that once intimated her daughter.

 Isabelle-Marie returns to introduce Louise to her little granddaughter and seems to want to mend bridges. In truth, the prodigal daughter has a hidden agenda. A few early remarks suggested that Isabelle-Marie might have been molested by her father when he lived, and this suggestion bears fruit. She takes indirect revenge on her father through Patrice, getting her brother drunk and shoving his face into boiling water with the line, “You’re free now; your face won’t look like Dad’s!” 

The little girl witnesses the injury and tells Louise, who ejects Isabelle-Marie from the house. Possibly as a result of Louise seeing how unhinged her daughter is, the widow apparently realizes that she can no longer keep her murderer-son with her and sends him to an asylum, though it may not be a total coincidence that she casts him out because he’s not good-looking anymore. 

A day or so later, Patrice breaks free of the asylum and runs home at the same time when Isabelle-Marie returns as well with her daughter in tow. Leaving the daughter in a safe place, Isabelle-Marie kills Louise by dousing her with gasoline and then setting her afire, possibly (but not definitely) for having failed to protect her from her father. After committing the act, she again sees the horse-headed spectre, now indicating her own capacity for murder. Isabelle-Marie flirts with the idea of killing herself beneath the wheels of a train but changes her mind and leaves on the train with her daughter. Patrice is last seen wandering in the forest, remembering how his sister called him an animal, with the clear implication that when he’s eventually caught this will be the level of his existence; that of an uncomprehending beast manipulated by beauties.

Obviously the title is meant to evoke the literary fable BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, with the obvious irony that it's the "handsome prince" who's turned into a beast, this time by the influence of not one but two women. The suggestions of an "Electra complex" between the three principals is given a relatively light touch compared, say, to Eugene O'Neill's similarly themed MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA, so that there's enough latitude to allow good complexity for its visual symbols-- disfigurement, the horse as untrammeled animal nature. Though the dysfunctional family is beyond hope, and its aberrances will probably get passed on to the innocent daughter, BEAST has the feeling of a drama rather than an irony, in that there are indications that some of the principals might have had a chance at avoiding calamity. The sole metaphenomenal image in the film, that of the horse-headed spectre, is clearly only in Isabelle-Marie's warped brain and so functions only as a naturalistic trope, much like the imaginary phantoms in Ibsen's not dissimilar play GHOSTS.