Had Henry James been alive and well in the 1980s, it’s unlikely you would have ever seen him getting busy on the dance floor. He probably wouldn’t have even set foot in a nightclub.
And yet director Patric Chiha has had the rather novel idea to take one of the writer’s classic stories and transpose it to the Parisian disco world that reigned throughout the late 1970s and into the 80s, until techno and house music took over in the 90s.
Setting James’ The Beast in the Jungle (La Bête dans la jungle) in that place and time is certainly intriguing, not to mention ambitious, but Chiha’s fifth feature falls short when it comes to making the original story feel fresh and the stakes feel high. For all the glitter and gloss he tosses at us, it’s as if his movie were loaded with Quaaludes instead of cocaine and ecstasy, and it may wind up putting some people to sleep.
Premiering in Berlin’s Panorama section, where Chiha’s documentaries Brothers of the Night and If It Were Love were both well received, the film may get some attention through its formal audaciousness, not to mention the casting of French star Anaïs Demoustier (Anaïs in Love). But it’s too benumbing an affair to garner much interest outside of France, Belgium and Austria, where it was produced.
In some ways the conceit works: James’ 1903 story is about a man who is convinced some sort of earth-shattering event will one day change his life. So instead of actually living it, he waits around for “the beast in the jungle” to emerge, foregoing a relationship with the woman who loves him and letting his existence, as well as hers, slowly slip away.
Chiha, who adapted the novella with Axelle Ropert and Jihane Chouaib, transposes that scenario to a nameless French nightclub circa 1979 where the man, John (Tom Mercier), crosses paths with the woman, May (Demoustier), and then proceeds to spend the next few decades promising her that something major is about to happen.
Standing off to the side of the dance floor as everyone else parties is a nice metaphor for watching life pass one by. There’s also the promise that a night on the town offers, until the drugs and alcohol wear off and one is hit by the cold light of reality. In that sense, Chiha does a good job modernizing James’ idea to a disco era filled with promise that, especially after AIDS hit, become a time of pain and regret.
Where his film doesn’t work is in the drama itself, which feels artificial and unconvincing. This might be because James’ plot made sense at the turn of the last century but feels ill-adapted to our epoch, but it’s also due to the distanced way Chiha directs his actors, who annunciate their lines as if they were under heavy sedation.
This is especially the case of Mercier, the Israeli actor whose grueling and very physical performance in the 2019 Berlin Golden Bear winner Synonyms was a breakthrough, but who here looks like he’s been lobotomized. The always reliant Demoustier comes across better — her May is bubbly, at least at first, and never loses a chance to shake it to the beat, even as time passes by and life begins to elude her.
But the charisma between the two leads just isn’t there, even if again, that may be what James was after in a story that was apparently a barely disguised self-critique of his own inability to engage in any kind of romantic relationship. On screen that idea just doesn’t take off, and at 103 minutes the film could have definitely used a few trims, especially in a lumbering first half that gets more interesting when things get darker.
The aesthetic, with frosted lensing and heavily saturated colors courtesy of cinematographer Céline Bozon (Félicité), is an acquired taste, but it’s also one of the film’s best assets. Chiha certainly knows the milieu he’s depicting, and the dance scenes, of which there are dozens, feel both real and surreal, which seems to be the effect he’s going for. The film works better when we can watch all the dancing instead of listening to the flat dialogue, including a lacnoic voiceover by Béatrice Dalle who cameos as the creepy, cape-wearing nightclub gatekeeper.
A disco and techno-heavy soundtrack by three composers provides a steady beat to accompany all the gyrating bodies and explosion of colors and genders — the club seems to cater primarily to an LGBTQ+ crowd — a world Chiha captures like a long, and ultimately exhausting, waking dream that gradually turns into a gloomy nightmare.
Director: Patric Chiha
Screenplay: Patric Chiha, Axelle Ropert, Jihane Chouaib, based on the short story by Henry James
Cast: Anaïs Demoustier, Tom Mercier, Béatrice Dalle, Martin Vischer, Sophie Demeyer, Perdro Cabanas, Mara Taquin
Producers: Charlotte Vincent, Katia Khazak
Cinematography: Céline Bozon
Production design: Eve Martin
Costume design: Claire Dubien
Editing: Karina Ressler, Julien Lacheray
Music: Yelli Yelli, Dino Spiluttini, Florent Charissoux
Production companies: Aurora Films (Paris), Frakas Productions (Belgium), WILDart Film (Austria)
World sales: Les Films du Losange
Venue: Berlin Film Festival (Panorama)
In French
103 minutes
