a review of 悲伤的贝拉多娜

2019 CULT MOVIE CHALLENGE WEEK 3: ANIME WEEK I think this one is going to be in the eye of the beholder for a lot of people who watch it. It begins with a disturbingly evocative sequence of sexualized violence and maintains a tone of polymorphic perversity throughout, with the main character Jeanne passing through several stages of horrific victimization before becoming an immensely powerful, albeit seemingly benign, witch/sex goddess. Satan is depicted as a literal talking phallus, becoming more of a looming, coercive presence the longer our heroine remains under his influence. It doesn't partake of either a dull conservative view of human sexuality, nor one that might be considered as particularly liberated or feminist, so it's difficult to see Jeanne's character struggle as an ultimately empowering thing. I can only imagine what American audiences would have made of it at the time, if it had been released here prior to its recent restoration. It's 100% a film of the sexual revolution and unapologetic in its flirtation with the contemporary pop-Satanism of the '70s, so one wonders if it could have helped kick-start the anime craze in America a full decade earlier, or if it would have become another focus of the '70s/'80s Satanic panic in this country, or both.