In the year 2044, a form of artificial intelligence governs society on the principles of stoicism, repressing all human emotion to render people docile workers.

Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux) is suffering from a kind of all-encompassing existential angst and is brought before the AI to “clean” her DNA and heal past traumas by visiting past lives.

The process takes us from Belle Époque Paris to 21st century Los Angeles, as Gabrielle is drawn time and again to succeeding incarnations of the same man (Louis). Will their love reignite in the present, or are they doomed to be driven apart by circumstances beyond their control?

This is Bertrand Bonello’s take on the Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle, which he crafts into an unsettling, idiosyncratic, at times somewhat Lynchian meditation on social isolation and biopolitics.