Belle Review

Having premiered at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival which has garnered Belle a lot of buzz, Belle is a virtual reality set anime film which has surprising and shocking turns.

Suzu (Kaho Nakamura) is a quiet and reserved high school student from rural Japan. She’s distant with her dad, grieves over her mother who she lost when she was six and is an outsider at school. When her only friend invites her to join the VR app U she assumes the identity of Bell. In this virtual world Suzu becomes a singing sensation, but she soon gets infatuated by a troublemaking badboy known as the Dragon.

I went into Belle not knowing much about it. I thought it was going to be a film about a teenage girl who uses virtual reality as an escape from her real life. Belle did feature this story but it also took a surprising turn because it turned into a virtual world version of Beauty and the Beast. To be fair a clue was in the name since Belle was one of the main characters in the French fairy tale and the film makes a reference to Belle changing her name from the English spelling to the French spelling since Belle means Beautiful in French.

When Belle turned into Beauty and the Beast it was pretty blatant with its references. When Belle looking for The Dragon’s castle, she was led by his AI companions, and Belle has to break through the Dragon’s emotional walls. The Dragon has an aggressive personality where he yells at Belle to leave him alone, but he uses anger to prevent people from finding out about his emotional pain. A dance scene between Belle and The Dragon looked similar to the ballroom scene in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. There was also a scene where Belle gets attacked by the Guardians, and The Dragon flies in to save Belle, like The Beast fighting off the wolves. The character of Justin was in a similar role to Gaston because he presented himself as a popular lawman who was protecting the world from the monster, but in reality, only harboured a hatred for the creature.

Beauty and the Beast as a tale have endured for a long time. It has been adapted numerous times, so a modern Japanese version is a perfectly welcome edition. Belle was more than a reinterpretation of Beauty and the Beast. The setup for Belle was a lot like Ready Player One or a Black Mirror episode where a character escapes from their real lives and reinvents themselves. There was also a lot of teen angst like A Silent Voice and When Marnie Was There. Belle, A Silent Voice, and When Marnie Was There were all focused on isolated young characters who were still suffering from childhood trauma.

All of this made Belle an incredibly rich film that was filled with character drama. It was both a coming-of-age story about a girl gaining confidence and friends, a look at internet fame, and an unconventional romance. Films like A Silent Voice and When Marnie Was There were emotionally filled stories as their young protagonist were overcoming confidence issues. In Suzu’s case she was unable to sing after her mum’s death and going into cyberspace she got to showcase her talent. Suzu also had to deal with more grounded issues because she has a distant relationship with her father and navigates her issues with her classmates. Belle was a film about Suzu’s emotional journey.

Belle was also a cyberpunk story. People go into U to create a new identity and escape the problems. They can live their fantasies and gain fame whilst keeping anonymity. Unlike Ready Player One or Black Mirror, the real world in Belle was not a dystopian hellscape nor was everyone addicted to U because many continued to live their lives. People who used U do so because they have personal issues which made Belle a more emotive film. Belle does go into some dark territory during its final act.

Belle had some beautiful animation, as one would expect from an anime film. 2D animation was used for scenes set in the real world and it was of a high standard. There was terrific scenery and lots of detail as characters lived their day-to-day lives. Whilst these scenes were more grounded there were moments of exaggeration used for comic effect. The animation used for U was distinct. It looked otherworldly since it combined traditional anime designs and put them into a 3D world. It was like a video game that was fitting for its VR world. It allowed for some unique and at times breath-taking vision and helps Belle stand out in the field of anime.

Belle was a fantastic and dense film that managed to traverse style and genre. It’s a great anime offering which was quite a feat considering how many great anime films there are.

Belle is out on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K UHD Blu-ray on 22nd June 2022