My favorite movie of August: Belle (2021)
Take note disney, this is a good Beauty & a Beast retelling.
I have to confess: Beauty and the Beast is not my favorite fairy tale out there. Let alone the movie adaptations.
Don’t get me wrong, I love twisted old stories for children since I was a child myself. Take The Little Mermaid by Andersen for example. The mermaid falls in love with a prince, takes a potion to have feet, feels like she walks on needles everytime she takes a step but the prince ends up marrying another. Instead of stabbing him and making him bleed on her feet to be a mermaid again, she kills herself and dissolves into foam.
There are countless disturbing fairy tales that were rewritten for mainstream media to be more digestable. And understandably so when you read the original plots.
In Cinderella, the sisters amputate parts of their feet to fit in the shoes.
Rumour has it that the prince assaults the princess in Sleeping Beauty and that another prince abandons a pregnant Rapunzel (or he is blinded by thorns, it depends).
Let’s not forget the step-mother in Snow White who has to put on red-hot slippers and dance until she dies.
… I can go on with examples.
So no, Beauty and the Beast and its glamorization (arguably) of Stockholm Syndrome does not surprise me. It’s just that, in my opinion, the story itself is extremely boring.
A prince cursed for his selfishness becomes a beast who has to redeem himself by earning the love of a girl sounds like an interesting premise. But the execution is not my cup of tea and there is no adaptation of Beauty and the Beast that I liked so far.
Scratch that, there was no movie adaptation of Beauty and the Beast that I liked until I watched Belle (2021) this month.
Belle in the metaverse
“Suzu is a 17-year-old high school student living in a rural town with her father. Wounded by the loss of her mother at a young age, Suzu one day discovers the massive online world “U” and dives into this alternate reality as her avatar, Belle. Before long, all of U’s eyes are fixed on Belle, when, suddenly, a mysterious dragon-like figure appears before her.” — Synopsis from letterboxd.com
Belle is a retelling of the original Beauty and the Beast. This animation movie focuses on Suzu, who is a not-so-popular highschooler, traumatized by her mother’s death, but finds solace in the virtual world. She reinvents herself through her virtual alter ego Belle, who happens to be a popular singer in the metaverse. During one of Belle’s concert, the Beast is chased by a vigilante group (virtual cops if you want) and she wants to discover his real identity.
Now, I rarely check the director of a movie before watching it. But if I did for Belle, I would have known that the director being Mamoru Hosoda, the movie could not be anything but excellent. The thing I love about his stories is that it’s all about the little things that make friendships and family so precious.
That’s also why I enjoyed Belle.
A Platonic Love
Sorry folks but Belle is not about a romance between Belle and the Beast, and that’s exactly why it makes it so good for me.
Suzu hides behind her avatar Belle and believes that her real self could never be as worthy as her virtual persona. She avoids her father, she avoids her childhood friend, and she avoids singing again like she used to. Her love for music was actually transmitted to her by her mom. On the other hand, Belle is extremely famous and loved for her music online and IRL. When she happens to meet the Beast she is intrigued and she looks for information on him.
As she finally discovers the real identity of the Beast, she has to save him, and in order to do so, she has to abandon her virtual sanctuary.
We follow Suzu as she tries to overcome her trauma and go beyond the comfort of her small world. She learns to have an impact beyond the online world “U” and save others by starting to save herself.
So no, Belle and the Beast do not love each other in a romantic way, they save each other. They both try to find a place to exist and hide from the real life in “U”. Helping the Beast forces Suzu to find herself and accept to reach out to her friends and her father.
Final thoughts …
I hope that I didn’t spoil the story too much. No words can really describe the beauty of this story or the satisfaction you get from the character development.
I guess that’s what it takes to make Beauty and the Beast interesting: remove the love story between them and just see the real people who hide behind their appearance.
By the way, I was going to choose American Mary (2012) as my favorite movie for August but it was too gore for a hot summer day like today. Let’s talk about it some other time !
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