The Cinematheque

Herz’s richly crafted retelling of the Beauty and the Beast fantasy takes a road less travelled, towards full-on Gothic horror. The disturbing film (“The Virgin and the Monster” in its Czech title) is definitely no children’s movie — but it is, with its arresting lyricism and striking style, an eminently worthy rival to the classic 1946 version by Jean Cocteau. ​“A tale you’ll know well — innocent girl presents herself as sacrifice to a cursed, freakish beast living in isolation, and learns to live with and love her captor — but turned into something very different in Herz’s morbid imagining. Reworking the material for this dark, grimly atmospheric fable, Herz defamiliarizes it, imagining a beaked bird/​snake/​mammal hybrid Beast unlike any seen on screen before, and overlaying the proceedings with a heavy air of impending doom, real danger, and the possibility of violence missing from better-known versions” (Nick Pinkerton, Metrograph). 

Advisory: Contains graphic scenes of animal slaughter.