In my ongoing quest to fill the gaps in my anime canon, I finally sat down with Belladonna of Sadness—a classic film whose reputation reached me long before I made it appointment viewing to scratch off my growing watchlist. Even in my ignorance, I knew that ever since the glorious times of fully hand-drawn animation, Belladonna of Sadness has held a venerated position. Even by today’s standards, as an anime film, Belladonna of Sadness still has few equals.
I went in expecting a kind of psychedelic Fantasia: lush, sentimental, and unmistakably tragic in the indelible way all French-inspired works are. What I didn’t clock was the fine print. This classic is very much an adult animated film whose ornate watercolor tableaux unfold like a 90-minute AMV as its heroine’s path to revenge is framed by sexual liberation and a pact with the devil. And honestly, given the world she’s up against, I can’t hold it against her.
Based on Jules Michelet’s novel La Sorcière, Belladonna of Sadness is a quasi-musical that holds nothing back in its depiction of carnal desire, abuse, and liberation derived from sex. Its story starts out like a cloying fairy tale, wherein a kind man named Jean and his beautiful partner, Jeanne, are the talk of the town, practically embodying platonic, pure love, with a whimsical song laying it on thick. That is, until they reach their wedding day. It turns out Jean didn’t provide the cows’ milk required for their union to be recognized by their town’s ruler and tax collectors. In the ultimate act of betrayal, Jeanne is assaulted as tribute for their wedding as Jean turns a blind eye. Unraveled by the betrayal of her kind-in-name-only husband, the couple’s honeymoon period is marred by tragedy as Jean morphs into a deadbeat beggar and Jeanne pays the consequences of his perdition.
Backed into a corner, Jeanne is visited by the Devil (who, in every depiction, is drawn like a giant penis) and cuts a deal with him to gain power. While her pact was initially meant to help heal her bum of a husband’s waning health, Jeanne’s trysts with Satan trigger an awakening, transforming her into an all-powerful witch hellbent on karmic vengeance against the royals and the peasants who both sat idly by or participated in her assault, wielding carnal pleasure and vices as her weapons of choice.
Calling Belladonna of Sadness a fever dream would be doing the film a great disservice. There has never been, and there may never be, a film as unparalleled in its singularly gorgeous imagery as Belladonna of Sadness. No better marker emphasizes its winning quality as poignantly as its panoramic, hand-drawn watercolor art, woven together like the stitching of a grand tapestry, effectively framing the scorn, surrealism, and phantasmal sexual energy in every corner of the movie. That’s not to say the entire film is awash with vibrant color and held back by limited animation. Once its lines start moving, Belladonna of Sadness is as mesmerizing as watching flames dance. Or, more pointedly, it’s like watching bubbles form and disperse in a lava lamp while stoned out of your gourd—only replace heated wax with human bodies strewn together in the most jam-packed assortment of sexual innuendos the likes of which animation will never see again.
While I’m far from a prude, having read Paru Itagaki’s body of work and immersed myself in warmly pornographic fantasy epics with more to their plots than just spice, I’ve never encountered a smattering of sexual innuendo, ranging from the outlandish to the repulsive, like what Belladonna of Sadness was serving up. And honestly, Belladonna of Sadness’ fantastically unhinged trek through Jeanne’s sexual odyssey is what makes its story and artistry compellingly provocative. This film is as close to a psychosexual synesthesia trip—the edible you thought ain’t shit until things get spooky real fast—that’s equal parts terrifying to witness and alluring.
Granted, the film’s as subtle as a brick when it comes to the capital S sexual imagery. Seguing after the film’s disarmingly grotesque opening and a magnificently absurd sequence of hell (?) as orgasmic flashes of random bullshit as Jeanne and Satan perform the beast with two backs is a downright insane sequence of an orgy demonstrating Jeanne’s cult of personality infecting the townsfolk. I was seeing bunny rabbits pop out of men’s asses ad nauseum, penis dapping each other up, and woodpeckers going to town on crotches. Shit was wild.
Yet amid the noise of its sexual overture and its shocking, occasionally tantalizing imagery, there is a narrative with teeth that casts Jeanne as the harbinger of agency and uncompromising retribution. After being put through hell on Earth, Jeanne emerges—succeeding where even black death failed—bringing her assailers to ruin with the simple act of becoming a conduit to their deepest desires. Sure, there’s hell to pay for daring to say no to her assumed betters and asking for the world for girl-bossing too hard. But that’s the price you pay for being an icon who sparks other women’s awakenings in her wake. Jeanne will forever be famous in my book.
Belladonna of Sadness is available to purchase and rent digitally on Google Play and Amazon Prime, and is streaming for free on STIRR.
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