Beast showing at Revelation: Perth International Film Festival.
In just her second feature film role to date, Jessie Buckley rattles her way through Beast as though she’s shaking off a lifetime’s worth of inhibitions. That’s the process her character, the maligned Moll Huntford, is going through, but there’s a touch of exorcising broader demons in the actor’s performance. The Irish talent has other credits to her name – theatre, short films and TV parts in War & Peace, Taboo, The Last Post and The Woman in White – however her latest work ripples with quiet but unmistakable power, as though Buckley is finally staking her big-screen claim.
As Moll, Buckley plays the obvious black sheep, both within the character’s own family and in the close-knit community on the island of Jersey. The 27-year-old is usually kept under close watch by her stern mother (Geraldine James, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story), thanks to a childhood incident that haunts the former and emboldens the latter’s control. When her younger sister Polly (Shannon Tarbet, TV’s Genius) steals the limelight at Moll’s birthday party, it gives her a rare excuse to sneak out unnoticed from a situation where she’s far from happy. The brooding Pascal (Johnny Flynn, Lovesick) certainly notices, and a romance ensues despite widespread disapproval from relatives and friends alike, and despite mounting suspicions about the culprit behind a spate of recent killings.
Marking the feature debut of writer/director Michael Pearce, Beast intends to evoke ambiguity with its title – does it refer to Moll’s dark past, the enigmatic Pascal or the small-town locale’s easy adoption of a mob mentality? Like all purposefully elusive monikers, the various components fit the bill with calculated ease. That said, the film is a portrait of its protagonist first and foremost, a twisty dive into psychological territory second and a snapshot of insular thinking beyond that. It’s Moll’s experience and emotions that drive an effort that, otherwise, might more closely resemble an all-too-standard dynamic; accounts of nice women falling for alluring men with a hidden side have long been a thriller staple.
Indeed, Moll isn’t held back by Pascal, who woos her with his outsider charm as well as his willingness to treat her with the respect that no one else – not even the bland policeman (Oliver Maltman, The Mercy) also trying to attract her affections –even thinks to give. She’s empowered by their initially tentative, eventually hot-and-heavy relationship, casting off the shackles of her domineering mother and even trying to face her own mistakes. Buckley paints this journey from mild-mannered to self-assured as textured, detailed and gripping, though it’s the way she conveys the shades in-between that defines and electrifies her performance. There’s agony evident at every step, a sensation that morphs and evolves in what always proves an imperfect scenario for a woman sick of being seen as the town outcast.
The narrative’s murder-mystery mightn’t prove Beast’s core focus, but Pearce borrows from the genre in his mood and aesthetics. Unease speaks louder than words and the air crackled with tension from the outset, in a film with a tone as cool as many of its seaside- and forest-set images. Crucially, however, cinematographer Benjamin Kracun employs an approach that worked so devastatingly well in the similarly excellent and intense For Those in Peril, never bleeding the feature’s surroundings of their splendour. Flynn, too, earns the same description, giving Pascal’s primal charisma the same vigour as his soft menace. It remains Moll’s story and Buckley’s showcase, but this tale of beasts and beauty claws through appearances, expectations, and the fine line between inviting and troubling – and victim and attacker – on a plethora of levels.
Rating: 4 stars ★★★★
Beast
Director: Michael Pearce
UK, 2017, 107 mins
Revelation Perth International Film Festival
5-18 July 2018
www.revelationfilmfest.org
Melbourne International Film Festival
2-19 August 2018
miff.com.au
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