Director Christophe Gans
Staring Vincent Cassel and Lea Seydoux
Rated M
Score 2/6

An unexpected romance blooms after the youngest daughter of a merchant who has fallen on hard times offers herself to the mysterious beast to which her father has become indebted.

Before I get too far into this review, no I have not watched the Disney 1991 animated movie, yes there are gaps in my film education but in my defense there are ten movie adoptions of Beauty and the Beast ranging from an animated short released 1934 until a Franco-German production released in 2014 and directed by Christophe Gans . Also from what little I know about the plot of the ‘91 Disney animated movie has some differences with the plot of Gans’ movie. Most notably, with how the beast came to be cursed.
The movie is watchable (also visually very beautiful) and I suppose is darker than what you might expect its Disney counterpart to be. Perhaps I would have liked to have seen the movie to be slightly sweeter than it actually was, though I am glad it did make me slip into the cinematic equivalent of a diabetic coma. Vincent Cassel and Lea Seydoux really did not have that much of an on-screen chemistry as The Beast and Belle, the only standout performances seemed to be given by Audrey Lamy and Sara Giraudeau who portrayed Belle’s older sisters Anne and Clotilde (and they really did not have much screen time). There was also a couple of plot points that were condensed probably excessive running time, but it made Belle’s brothers seem almost surplus to requirement.