Henry James on the dancefloor! La Bête dans la Jungle (aka The Beast in the Jungle) sees the old Edwardian master throwing some pretty fly shapes in this fabulous and slightly mad adaptation of a James novella from 1903.
The action may have shifted from London to France but the characters and plot are largely intact. It’s 1979 when May first meets John in a Paris discotheque. In what looks like May making a clumsy move on him, she claims she and John have met before. He isn’t sure they have. She insists. He reluctantly goes along with her insistence, though quite why this nice-looking but not exceptionally attractive guy isn’t reacting more to this hot girl’s overtures is puzzling.
It turns out it’s not a ruse on May’s part. They have met before, and John was just as weirdly remote that time as this. Later, she tells him she knows his secret, because he told her last time they met – he believes he has been marked out in life for something special. Something super-fantastic is going to happen to him, and that’s why he he behaves to weirdly. He’s saving himself for whatever it is.
She, for reasons which never really become clear, decides to accompany him on his vigil. In scenes faintly reminiscent of the David Nicholls story One Day, this goes along for the ride, tracking John and May as they intermittently meet at this same club. The years go by. The 1970s shift to the 1980s. We hear that Mitterand has been elected President of France (1981). That Klaus Nomi is dead (it must be 1983). That Aids has arrived and is laying waste the clientele of this largely gay club (mid 80s). The Berlin Wall falls (1989). Later, the Twin Towers are attacked (2001). Disco has yielded to the new romantics, hi-nrg has given way to house, acid house and techno. The disco is now a club but John and May are still there, meeting intermittently in spite of the fact that May has a boyfriend, who becomes a husband.
It’s a strange and inexplicable relationship. In the James original, there is an ironic dénouement that’s meant to be instructive – don’t waste your life waiting for the big one. The lesson is largely the same here, with the irony a bit less pronounced but still discernible. James loved his ironic switcheroo endings.
What a fascinating, minimalist/maximalist movie this is. Minimalist in the sense that it’s just Anaïs Demoustier and Tom Mercier as May and John, and that they are basically waiting for Godot, or some Jamesian prototype. Maybe they are in love with each other. Two other key characters – the club’s bouncer, played by Béatrice Dalle, and the toilet attendant (nicknamed Monsiuer Pipi, amusingly), played by Pedro Cabanas – do not let on, but suggest that they might be. Why else would two people keep going like this, especially May – she’s not been vouchsafed any future bonanza. And she’s being left behind by younger, sexier clubbers.
Maximalist because the music pumps and grinds, spins and churns the entire time, and director Patric Chiha gives us plenty to look at on the dancefloor – people dancing like they’re possessed, sometimes naked, often ecstatic, arms aloft even in the pre-arms-aloft era. Chiha shoots it the way a club feels – warm and intense and fuzzy. If it isn’t on 16mm film, it’s been digitally set up to come across that way – it’s grainy and the colours are rich, as if senses are heightened. Drugs might have been sampled.
It is a brilliant solution to the problem of the static nature of the story – two people sitting about waiting is transformed into two people in the middle of a phantasmagorical maelstrom, and it almost obscures the fact that the basic premise doesn’t really stack up.
If you can accept May’s bizarre life choice there is a whole lot to enjoy here. If you cannot, then La Bête dans la Jungle is going to come across as an awful lot of Euro arthouse fannying about. Personally, I love a bit of Euro arthouse fannying about, which is why I loved this evocative, cosy and yet entirely nihilistic film.
The Beast in the Jungle – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
