Valentina Chamorro Westergårdh | Séptimo (Beast) / 2011

the beast in each of us 

Valentina Chamorro Westergårdh (screenwriter and director) Séptimo (Beast) / 2011 [24 minutes]

 

Never has a werewolf tale been sadder as director Valentina Chamorro Westergårdh’s Beast.

     Gustav (Robert Noack), visiting a Swedish resort beach runs into a local, who remains in the isolated wooded spot all year round, the stunningly beautiful and dark Swede Vincent (Andreas La Chenardière) and almost immediately falls in love.

 

   At first, Vincent, although sharing Gustav’s loving stares, is cautious, refusing to suggest that he might be willing for join Gustav for sex. Finally, Gustav takes the lead, and the two have seemingly joyful sex and become increasingly close as the days pass.

     But there is still apparent dread in Vincent’s demeanor, as he daily shaves, plucks his heavy dark eyebrows, and demands to spend some times alone.

     One day the two go swimming in the cold waters, but something overcomes Vincent, and even Gustav realizes he is ill, taking him back to his cabin. Once there, Vincent demands that his friend leave him alone, suffering by himself a pattern, it is apparent, that he has long grown used to.

     Yet Gustav returns, almost forcing his love upon Vincent as the two engage in a passionate sexual interlude. But it is the night of the full moon, and when Gustav awakes, he finds Vincent gone.

     Dressing, Gustav goes to look for his now lover, finally discovering a beast nearby who is hardly recognizable. He closes his eyes in disbelief, as the screen goes dark.

      In the next frame we see Vincent dragging Gustav’s body toward him, in tears, holding his beloved near him, having evidently killed him as the beast.

     Westergårdh’s version of the werewolf tale makes apparent that her beast is a metaphor for Oscar Wilde’s insistence that “you always kill the one you love” or, to put it another way, we often destroy those whom we most love, simply because they have put themselves, in loving us, in harm’s way.

      I once met someone to whom I was so attracted that I would have gone to bed with him in a moment, had he not insisted that he had a pattern of hurting anyone who fell in love with him. I resisted, and probably was saved from psychological trauma; I don’t believe he was speaking of physical hurt but the mental hurt we often impose unintentionally and intentionally on lovers. You don’t even need to look like a hairy werewolf to be one.

 

Los Angeles, March 15, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (March 2024).