Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
An evil feudal lord rapes a village girl on her wedding night and proceeds to ruin her and her husband's lives. After she's eventually banished from her village, the girl makes a pact with the devil to gain magical ability and take revenge.
Belladonna of Sadness is a singular psychedelic art film that stands apart from virtually everything in animation history. Its cinematography is genuinely exceptional — Eiichi Yamamoto and artist Kuni Fukai craft stunning watercolor and Art Nouveau-inspired tableaux that feel closer to Gustav Klimt and Aubrey Beardsley than anything in mainstream animation, earning a well-above-average mark. Novelty is likewise exceptional; no other film quite occupies this space between hentai, feminist allegory, Satanic imagery, and avant-garde art cinema. The plot is serviceable as a dark fable but leans on familiar rape-revenge and devil's-pact mechanics without deep structural sophistication. The voice acting (even accounting for cultural context) is functional rather than distinguished — characters are more archetypes than rounded performances. The ending, while emotionally and visually striking in its revolutionary coda, feels somewhat abrupt and didactic in its historical framing, landing just above average rather than transcendent.