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In that, it sticks to the classics with cowboys and soldiers spouting racist epithets and playing games of power, keeping the film at a slow boil until moments of stark violence pierce the tension and lift the veil on this dark past. The Beast, a wildly ambitious effort from French director Bertrand Bonello, who was also the subject of a retrospective this year, also benefited from a final scene that exploded beyond the structure the film had previously set up. The film takes wild swings going from period piece propriety to glitchy social media satire, not afraid to be unpleasant if it means plunging into the depths of the human soul. Following a Romanian construction worker and the few lazy days preparing his oncoming trip back home, the film is like a breath of fresh air, unspooling gently along the streets of the city, soaking up its stories, its greenery, pausing to look down with a seed scientist in an extended pas de deux in a public park.