The lack of material evidence left behind by Expo 67 is staggering. So remarkable, in fact, that we felt impelled to explore the site of the world’s fair in detail, searching for clues that throw light on its past – a kind of material archaeology à la Walter Benjamin, who sought in materiality the remnants and rejects, the traces of an ancient history that might reverberate down to the present.
La Belle Bête is a powerful study of the conflict between beauty and ugliness, hate and love. The story revolves around three main characters. At the center, Patrice, a beautiful but mindless youth stands gazing at his image in the water. Around him move his ugly sister Isabelle-Marie, and his frivolous mother Louise, the first lost in love and hate for her brother's beauty, the second seeing it as an adornment for herself. Into this small, obsessed universe come a blind boy and an elegant fop from the outside world. At once, the pattern breaks and events move forward into a terrifying denouement.
The Director reflects upon and seeks to understand the causes and the events that lead to her drug-addicted prostitute daughter being murdered at the age of 26.
