Belladonna of Sadness (Yamamoto, 1973): BFI Southbank, NFT2, 8.30pm
New York Times review:
To summarize this film is to present a solid argument that it’s one of the most unusual ever made: “Belladonna of Sadness,” is a 1973 Japanese erotic animated musical inspired by the 19th-century French historian Jules Michelet’s account of witchery in the Middle Ages. The reality of the movie, directed by Eiichi Yamamoto, is odder still. Opening with a jazz-rock song and lyrical, static imagery of attractive Western figures in watercolor, it features narration telling of Jean and Jeanne, young French provincial marrieds “smiled upon by God.”
To summarize this film is to present a solid argument that it’s one of the most unusual ever made: “Belladonna of Sadness,” is a 1973 Japanese erotic animated musical inspired by the 19th-century French historian Jules Michelet’s account of witchery in the Middle Ages. The reality of the movie, directed by Eiichi Yamamoto, is odder still. Opening with a jazz-rock song and lyrical, static imagery of attractive Western figures in watercolor, it features narration telling of Jean and Jeanne, young French provincial marrieds “smiled upon by God.”
But not
for long. Jeanne is subjected to a brutal, surrealistically rendered
gang rape by the village lord and his claque. The film then lays out an
imaginative, and sometimes overwrought, narrative exegesis, positing
that the power of feminine sexuality is essentially demonic. While
weaving thread one afternoon, post-trauma, Jeanne is visited by a small,
phallus-shaped imp.
“Are you the Devil?” she asks.“I am you,” he replies. Thus begins Jeanne’s triumph and ruin. “Belladonna
of Sadness” is compulsively watchable, even at its most disturbing: The
imagery is frequently graphic, and still, after over 40 years, it has
the power to shock. The narrative, however implausible, is seductive.
And the meticulously executed visual freakouts are awe-inspiring: The
Black Death, which, of course, spices up the story line, gets its own
four-minute production number. The variety of graphic modes — with
references to fashion magazines, pop art, psychedelia, underground
comics, arty pornography and much more — is dizzying.
“Belladonna
of Sadness” is undoubtedly a landmark of animated film, and arguably a
masterpiece. But it’s a very disquieting one. After experiencing the
picture, you are left with the nagging suspicion that its retrograde
ideology and its ravishing imagery are not contradictory attributes but
are, rather, inextricably codependent.
Glen Kenny
Glen Kenny
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