Belle Runs for Her Life in Exclusive Clip From French 'Beauty and the Beast'


The tale as old as time is having a moment. In addition to Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast starring Emma Watson (in theaters March 2017), French director Christopher Gans has put his own spin on the fairytale in the fantasy film La Belle et la Bête (in select theaters on Sept. 23.) The Gans version stars Léa Seydoux (SPECTRE) and Vincent Cassel (Jason Bourne) — and if you can’t guess who’s the beauty and who’s the beast, the exclusive clip above should clue you in.

La Belle et la Bête appears to be a fairly traditional retelling of the story, with a few novel elements (the Beast’s past is revealed to Belle in dreams) and a pretty frightening beast. Set in a decadent fantasy kingdom, the film received a César Award for production design when it was released in France two years ago. “Beauty and the Beast,” of course, was originally a French fairytale, and Jean Cocteau’s dreamy 1946 adaptation La Belle et la Bête set the gold standard for all adaptations to follow. The 1991 Disney animated film is also set in France (though for some reason, the only characters with French accents are the candlestick and the feather duster).