What starts off as erotic hallucinatory psychedelia ends with a powerful message about female solidarity...beneath all the horror, the torture, and the violence, you’ll find a cry for revolt against various forms of inhumanity.

| Feb 20, 2024

A museum's picture in movement. A stimulant revisit to the legend Joan of Arc. About womanhood empowerment [Full review in Spanish]

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 16, 2021

Belladonna of Sadness is a landmark in the history of animation, both Japanese and international, and both due to its style and its radical content,

| Jul 26, 2020

It's a story worth at least one watch even if these aspects are not for you as the trippy watercolor animation should keep anyone's attention.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 19, 2020

It hits hard, and it keeps hitting, and even the moments that are narratively light are still heavy with the foggy dream-like quality of the artwork.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 10, 2020

Eichii Yamamoto artfully implements the human drama of the story amidst the visual phantasmagoria, preventing the anime from becoming just a collage of images.

| Dec 1, 2019

Belladonna is a Freudian fever dream, replete with psychedelic imagery, pornography and a score resembling Miles Davis's Bitches Brew.

| Aug 3, 2019

A gorgeous film, largely composed of slow pans across still watercolors, and punctuated by vivid, swirling, and, frequently, distinctly anatomical bursts of animation.

| Jul 24, 2019

No description of what transpires on screen within the frames of Belladonna of Sadness can quite do it justice, but suffice it to say those with tastes for the extremely offbeat should relish this daring, eventually hysterical odyssey.

| Jul 24, 2019

This is a really original piece of filmmaking. It is a challenging but thought-provoking watch.

| Original Score: 8/10 | May 29, 2019

A landmark in animation and a bold statement on sexual autonomy and liberation.

| Jan 9, 2019

No matter what events are unfolding in the story before you, the images alone of Belladonna of Sadness necessitate your attention.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 1, 2018

There's a constant awareness of the effort and artistry that went in to the film, and it's as if we're active participants in its creation.

| Mar 1, 2018

Carefully constructed and a little sloppy, alluring and disturbing, this gem deserves a trigger warning, but also a chance.

| Mar 1, 2018

The artwork is achingly delicate, but there's nothing subtle about Belladonna of Sadness.

| Mar 1, 2018

Still, there's an undeniable genius at work here, strong enough to survive the psychedelic sleaze that's been baked into every frame.

| Original Score: B+ | Mar 1, 2018

Relax your mind and just let the sounds and images, some beautiful, some disturbing, swirl around you.

| Dec 19, 2017

If the sexual politics are dodgy, the artistry is impossible to deny.

| Aug 18, 2017

For most viewers, we'd venture that it might take a potent combination of Viagra and LSD to make the contents of this film erotic, or even comprehensible. It's truly insane, and that may be the best reason to see it.

| Feb 28, 2017

The movie's graphic and highly stylized violence that still has the power to shock even four decades later.

| Jan 19, 2017