On Sunday, Eric Vilas-Boas and I watched the 1973 mindfuck Belladonna of Sadness at Brooklyn’s Videology Bar & Cinema. What follows are the notes I took in order to preserve my sanity while watching a film with a uniquely unsettling depiction of sexual assault. Viewer discretion HELLA advised.
Is this medieval Europe or Japan? Oh wait, it’s both! This is like picture-book Gilliam meets Game of Thrones in Kurosawa’s Japan gone acid trip fairytale. Our heroine is Jeanne and her husband is Jean, and someone thought this was a good idea? Why is the lord’s face a skull with a bone cross through it? And why is his lady’s page a Bob Ross clown? Sex is evil and the consequences of rape are the victim’s fault, because jus primae noctis! UGH. Jeanne’s husband just straight up told her, “Let’s forget what happened. Our life starts from this moment.” No goddamn comment. Again, sex is evil, which must be why the devil looks like a penis. Does her hair color changes every five minutes even before she’s a witch? Is this soundtrack Love without the lyrics and arranged by a tripping Quentin Tarantino hanger-on? Oh, she’s seduced the whole village—because assault victims totally do that—and been condemned naked to the wintry wilderness. (Gotta love the looming priest who was on her side before her assault and is against her now.) Then she gives her sex soul to the dick devil and everything is Schoolhouse Rock on crack. Only Crackhouse Rock might’ve been more fun. How is she talking to all these peasants—she’s still alive? That peasant’s hand just became a boner! Jeanne saved the people from the Black Plague with black magic! Is this a metaphor? They actually burned her alive and crucified her naked! Who thought this was a good idea? Apparently not Osamu Tezuka! Wait, this was all supposed to take place in 1789? What just happened!?
What were the 1970s trying to prove, anyway—that gorgeous visuals excuse abysmal gender politics? I don’t know if that was the most disturbing thing I’ve ever seen or not, but I do know it made the worst parts of Zardoz look like Rugrats. Who needs a drink?
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