Beau tiene miedo

Ari Aster y su excesiva masturbación autoral. Los primeros tres cuartos de hora y unos buenos momentos posteriores no pueden redimir las injustificables tres horas de duración en las que, a pesar de los excesos y locuras de todos los acontecimientos, la trama fluye como si no fluyera. Alargar un corto de siete minutos a tres horas no es fácil. Para su película más cara, el estudio A24 debería haberse atrevido a regañar al cineasta y decirle que así no. Y no hay forma de que esta película recupere ni la mitad de su presupuesto, no hay forma. (18.05.2023)

I'm not gonna lie, I wish Aster had stayed on the ground and his new film was more connected to reality. Beau Is Afraid is a bizarre mindfuck, but, on the other hand, I appreciate that it is the kind of mindfuck that you SOMEHOW understand intuitively without having to read a lot of scholarly treatises about it. The beginning is brilliant, the second quarter is very good, in the third quarter the pace drops a bit, and the final quarter is downright confusing. Hereditary and Midsommar struck me as perfectly coherent works, where each piece fits into the puzzle, but I don't have that feeling with Beau is Afraid. On the contrary, I can imagine that certain sequences could have been missing altogether, the final quarter could have been replaced by something completely different, without fundamentally changing the tone or the impression of the work as a whole. Still, a film like no other that has to be seen. (21.04.2023)

The first segment in the apartment / on the street / in the store is congenially filmed paranoia. With goosebumps and my mouth hanging open, I witnessed the beginning of the film of the year, a film that I had been waiting decades for, a film that would put me in a cinephilic trance with every shot, every cut, every expression and every move that Joaquin Phoenix made. The second, laid-back and more comical segment still held the bar high and aroused my curiosity as to what would happen next. But with the segment in the forest, the film began to lose everything from the plot that had won me over and became an incoherent muddle of motifs and metaphors that don’t make sense in the psychological study of the main character. And if they’re supposed to makes sense, the viewer has long since lost interest in figuring them out. (23.10.2023)

Ari Aster and his artsy bizarre mind fuck, and also his weakest film. I like both Aster's Midsommar and Hereditary, he's definitely a distinctive and interesting new filmmaker, it's just that here for the first time he veered away from horror and made a weird genre mashup that only worked for me in the first two quarters, the other two I found weird and boring at the same time. Joaquin Phoenix plays a reclusive weirdo whose mother dies suddenly, and strange and bizarre things happen to him that pretty much make no sense. In short the film is far from reality. I thought the first act was great as there is a nice depiction of the chaos in the streets full of strange people, the occasional dead body and some situations escalate in unexpectedly funny ways, it's one of the best parts of the film. The second act is still okay too, it's weird in a cute way and has quite a shocking ending. The third act is already very weird, it includes animation and the audience's attention falls off slightly. Luckily it escalates by the end, which is unexpectedly action packed. Well, I found the finale desperately long, boring and also unnecessary. A strange film in which, although there is a lot going on, three hours is still incredibly long and the few interesting fun scenes are really scarce. Phoenix played a great role, but I'm glad the movie is over. Of the genre's recent oddities, Mother! and Men sat far better for me. 5.5/10. (18.06.2023)