Belle

In the vir­tu­al world of U, five bil­lion users con­gre­gate to chat, sing and hang out, rep­re­sent­ed by ​‘AS’ – avatars based on bio­met­ric infor­ma­tion that reveals a person’s ​“true self”. Suzu, a ner­vous teenag­er trau­ma­tised by the death of her moth­er, is a new sign-up who quick­ly redis­cov­ers her pas­sion for singing when she rein­vents her­self as a pink-haired char­ac­ter with a styl­ish wardrobe and a pow­er­ful set of pipes. She amass­es mil­lions of fol­low­ers in U, but to the real world she’s still shy, secre­tive Suzu, who has a strained rela­tion­ship with her father and secret­ly pines after her child­hood best friend, Shinobu.

This sto­ry forms the basis for Mamoru Hosoda’s charm­ing fea­ture, Belle, a riff on the clas­sic tale of Beau­ty and the Beast (there’s even a sequence which direct­ly pays homage to Disney’s ani­mat­ed ver­sion). While Suzu fights to keep her iden­ti­ty secret, she cross­es paths with the much-maligned ​‘Drag­on’, a rather severe-look­ing avatar who is vast­ly unpop­u­lar in the game and hunt­ed by a group called ​‘The Jus­tices’ who regard them­selves as the law with­in U. Suzu feels imme­di­ate sym­pa­thy for Drag­on, and tries to help him, despite the risk of being ​‘uncov­ered’ by the Jus­tices her­self. With­in this vir­tu­al world, the great­est pun­ish­ment is hav­ing your real-world iden­ti­ty unmasked, and Suzu fears ridicule, but comes to learn that for some, hav­ing their offline and online worlds col­lide has far more seri­ous consequences.

Belle is Hosoda’s most grown-up film in terms of sub­ject mat­ter, as it del­i­cate­ly tack­les the seri­ous issue of parental abuse while pro­vid­ing a vibrant, imag­i­na­tive ren­der­ing of a dig­i­tal world. Although the source mate­r­i­al is famil­iar, this update for the inter­net age is sparky enough to hold inter­est, and the songs embed­ded into the film are mem­o­rable and enjoy­able. Cer­tain nar­ra­tive choic­es don’t make par­tic­u­lar sense, but giv­en that most of the film takes place in a fan­ta­sy world, this can be over­looked to an extent.

More per­ti­nent are the sim­i­lar­i­ties to Hayao Miyaza­ki​’s Spir­it­ed Away. It may be a cliché to refer to Hoso­da as a poten­tial suc­ces­sor to Miyaza­ki con­sid­er­ing his con­nec­tion to Stu­dio Ghi­b­li (he was sup­posed to direct their adap­ta­tion of Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle but dropped out in 2002 due to cre­ative dif­fer­ences), yet it’s hard to deny in the case of Belle, which sees a beau­ti­ful young woman fall in love with a mis­un­der­stood young dragon.

Nev­er­the­less, the sto­ry is in the telling for Hoso­da, and there’s a whole lot of heart and soul in Belle. He dreams up a world that is easy to get lost in, from the imag­i­na­tive char­ac­ter design to lov­ing­ly-ren­dered car­toon ver­sions of social media plat­forms and video chat win­dows. Lit­tle touch­es such as a three-legged dog and a char­ac­ter sport­ing a pair of orange Crocs might go unno­ticed, but it’s details like this which make the film sing.

Fast becom­ing one of the most excit­ing film­mak­ers in Japan­ese ani­ma­tion, Hoso­da con­tin­ues to build on an impres­sive body of work, deal­ing with heavy themes in a sen­si­tive and artis­tic man­ner. ​“The world is the same every­where,” Suzu laments, but Hoso­da sug­gests maybe that’s no bad thing: at least we have each other.

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