In the movie Beau Is Afraid (handsome is scared), we meet the protagonist during a session with his shrink. In view of what will follow, this introduction could not be more appropriate. In fact, as disconcerting as his third feature film turns out, Ari Aster undoubtedly has more ideas. After Hereditary (Hereditary) And Midsommar (Midsommar, summer solstice), the filmmaker offers his most radical, divisive… and original film. In the title role, Joaquin Phoenix is equal to himself, that is to say completely invested.
This opening sequence at Beau’s psychologist prepares the public for the somewhat unusual story that will follow. If the information provided there is revealing, the manner in which it is provided is more so. This is a constant in Beau Is Afraid : the content matters, but the form, even more.
The visual dimension, dependent on an increased use of symbolism, is the keystone allowing the film to maintain its cohesion.
During this initial consultation, therefore, Beau appears in a frontal shot devoid of depth of field: he is crushed. He is moreover very small in the composition facing a doctor who dominates in the foreground. Understand: Beau is an adult, but he is also a child. And in fact, here he is talking about his mother…
Beau must imperatively join the latter. Mom is waiting for son to come to celebrate the anniversary of dad’s death, an anniversary that coincides with Beau’s conception: an oedipal odyssey on the horizon.
Between dark and absurd humor, between insidious and raw horror, Beau Is Afraid is a movie you either love or hate with equal passion.
Madness, allegory, surrealism
Shot in Montreal and Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, Ari Aster’s film takes malicious pleasure in destabilizing moviegoers as much as its protagonist. Stabbed in the middle of the street, hit by a car then kidnapped by the couple of drivers in a pastel version of MiseryBeau goes from torment to humiliation as he tries to get to his mother’s house.
Although he has little choice to leave, his apartment having been ransacked (but did it really happen?) by the dregs of the neighborhood. And this nightmare that haunts him, linked to a distinctly Freudian attic where a creature lurks, the nature of which will be kept secret…
Right off the bat, Beau’s tribulations are so outraged that it’s understood that the film takes place in its own reality; a reality that can be interpreted in various ways.
For example, it is reasonable to see in Beau a man suffering from schizophrenia or a victim of psychosis: the film anchoring itself to his point of view alone, we quite naturally share his delusional perception of the world. The preposterous action then becomes understandable, even sensible, because it is largely based on Beau’s hallucinations and whims.
We can also approach the film from an allegorical angle, with this man-child perpetually paralyzed by fear and who, in doing so, passnext to life, however frightening and fraught with pitfalls it may be. At 45, Beau is still a virgin – in addition to having an oversized scrotum (this is far from being the most disconcerting detail of the film).
Another possibility: purely surrealist reading, or Beau Is Afraidlike a cross between the cinema of Luis Buñuel and the novels of Franz Kafka and especially Roland Topor (The fanciful tenant, adapted by Roman Polanski in 1976). Again, almost everything makes sense.
actress numbers
We write “almost everything”, because during the last 45 minutes of the film, the false endings multiply. Laborious, this portion nevertheless benefits from the presence of Patti LuPone. The Broadway legend is fabulous as a mother-monster — like Toni Colette before her in Hereditary. Without forgetting Parker Posey, first love of childhood who dazzles then terrifies Beau: a worthy heiress of the fatal fiancée of Florence Pugh in Midsommar.
In this regard, from one production to another, the actresses amaze in the disturbing scores written for them by Ari Aster. Same as in Beau Is Afraidthey steal the show from Joaquin Phoenix, whose perpetual disarray ends up being a bit repetitive.
In closing, there were American critics to reproach the filmmaker for giving into psychotherapy rather than cinema. It’s a bit short. Indeed, haven’t filmmakers always had this propensity to use their films to exorcise their demons? And then, it’s not as if Ari Aster had not immediately announced his colors.