Belladonna of Sadness (1973)

Belladonna of Sadness is the kind of animated film that reminds you animation can be pure adult cinema: a fever-dream tapestry of watercolor washes, erotic surrealism, and bold, painterly compositions that feel closer to a gallery wall than a Saturday matinee. Eiichi Yamamoto stages Jeanne’s descent and transformation with audacious style and a hypnotic, dark-fantasy tone—part medieval nightmare, part psychedelic lament—while Tatsuya Nakadai’s Devil slithers through the story like a seductive idea you can’t unhear. It’s a film of genuine artistic ambition, more concerned with mood, symbol, and the bruised psychology of power than with conventional narrative comfort, and that’s exactly why it lingers. Fair warning: its sexual violence and disturbing imagery are explicit and punishing, so it’s not for everyone—but if you can meet it on its terms, it’s a singular, historically important work that earns its reputation as a rediscovered landmark.

Belladonna of Sadness is aiming for an art-house, feminist-leaning fever dream about trauma, power, and revolt, told through striking psychedelic imagery and an operatic sense of doom. The problem is that its message can get swallowed by the way it lingers on sexual violence and nude imagery, which may feel less like critique and more like exploitation depending on your tolerance and perspective. Story-wise it’s more a sequence of symbolic tableaux than a clean narrative, so if you need coherent plotting and grounded character work, you’ll likely find it frustrating or politically muddled. If you can handle extreme content and you’re here for experimental animation and unsettling allegory, it’s memorable; if not, it’s the kind of “beautiful” film that can leave you feeling gross rather than enlightened.