Pithy Review: BELLADONNA OF SADNESS, 1973
Eiichi Yamamoto / Yoshiyuki Fukuda / Masahiko Satoh
Easy to enjoy a masterpiece
A precious, embellished package of wickedness, Salò's goth teen sister crush, Belladonna of Sadness shares it's shocking, stylized violence with Pasolini. Not faring well with audiences of the time, it's impish simplicity, folk story/erotica appreciated decades later by clamoring tender hearts in a search for meaning in anime n’ camp. A ninety-three minute opioid immersion of panning, fibrous, watercolor landscapes wade through rippling orgies, painting an erotic medieval Joan of Arc folktale. Allow your conflicted sociopolitical concerns dissolve into slippery pools of languid Gustav Klimt hair, exhausted tears, streaming, swooping dark brushstrokes of heavy-lidded misery, sprinkled with satan, witchcraft, making it a hard sell to feminists at the time of its release and perhaps even more so now.
Belladonna's potent parts evoke the terrific, reliable banality of a Lana Del Rey-shaped-kind-of-shame, effervescing glamourous sentiments for diabolical romance and fumbling, hamfisted depictions of the wicked binary. The heroine's life and dreams are destroyed by a rape until she reclaims her beauty, sexuality, community and autonomy, finding power through drinking a flower potion. The villains stake out their territory with abuse, possession and gently whispered manipulations to grasp hold of vulnerable submissive victims. Blood covered bats spray forth from the main character's vagina as she is emotionally divided in half.
Replete with sexual politics sure to trigger the most self aware among us, at its heart, Belladonna of Sadness is a topical, yet alluring, tale of power struggles, loose, simple, bombastic and implausible, plenty of space for it’s triumphant aesthetics. The film itself comes at a close second, the boozy, elegantly fragrant psychedelic soundtrack by Masahiko Satoh that so masterfully complements the animation's histrionic blitzkriegs and crescendos of the despairing narrative arcs. Long to comprehend the lyrics. Gaspar Noe comes to mind. I feel like watching it a few more times and indulging in some confused, cathartic heartbroken weeping.