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It boasts all the surface beauty that fans of period pictures have come to expect, but Belle also benefits from its stirring performances and subtle social consciousness.
All Critics (147) | Top Critics (43) | Fresh (123) | Rotten (24) | DVD (1)
The teenage Dido Elizabeth Belle is impressively played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw with a tender sensibility and a growing awareness. Sep 23, 2014 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…
The teenage Dido Elizabeth Belle is impressively played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw with a tender sensibility and a growing awareness.
Kate Muir
Asante's own work of art is lamentably cautious but does, ultimately, throw up things we haven't seen before. It's pretty, in other words, but not entirely vacant. Jun 13, 2014 | Rating: 3/5 | Full Review…
Asante's own work of art is lamentably cautious but does, ultimately, throw up things we haven't seen before. It's pretty, in other words, but not entirely vacant.
Charlotte O'Sullivan
Asante handles this mainstream commercial picture with assurance. Jun 12, 2014 | Rating: 3/5 | Full Review…
Asante handles this mainstream commercial picture with assurance.
Peter Bradshaw
Race, love and social politics are deftly handled in Amma Asante's forcefully-acted feminist period drama. Jun 12, 2014 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…
Race, love and social politics are deftly handled in Amma Asante's forcefully-acted feminist period drama.
Ashley Clark
A good-looking and exceedingly polite film where perhaps a more complex one with less good manners would have been better. Jun 10, 2014 | Rating: 3/5 | Full Review…
A good-looking and exceedingly polite film where perhaps a more complex one with less good manners would have been better.
Dave Calhoun
It's an old-fashioned movie with a very modern streak, centered by a vibrant star turn by Mbatha-Raw, whose watchful, wise Dido makes an enchanting heroine. May 22, 2014 | Rating: 3.5/4
It's an old-fashioned movie with a very modern streak, centered by a vibrant star turn by Mbatha-Raw, whose watchful, wise Dido makes an enchanting heroine.
Moira MacDonald
Belle has a great lead performance from a Black actress in a Black woman director's film of a Black woman's script about a Black woman in European history (who wasn't a slave): an opportunity that doesn't come very often for audiences. Mar 13, 2019 | Full Review…
Belle has a great lead performance from a Black actress in a Black woman director's film of a Black woman's script about a Black woman in European history (who wasn't a slave): an opportunity that doesn't come very often for audiences.
Ren Jender
While indignant in its stance, the film is never preachy, instead presenting a strong sense of morality that is difficult to ignore with-out resorting to unnecessary emotional histrionics, focussing instead on the characters. Mar 4, 2019 | Full Review…
While indignant in its stance, the film is never preachy, instead presenting a strong sense of morality that is difficult to ignore with-out resorting to unnecessary emotional histrionics, focussing instead on the characters.
Paula Fleri-Soler
Director Amma Asante has crafted a film that is part Jane Austen and part historical drama, with one element more interesting than the other. Mbatha-Raw carries the film well. Jan 31, 2019 | Full Review…
Director Amma Asante has crafted a film that is part Jane Austen and part historical drama, with one element more interesting than the other. Mbatha-Raw carries the film well.
Micheal Compton
...a provocative essence of the well-received 19-century costume drama. British-Ghanaian filmmaker Amma Asante oversees an inviting and lyrical exposition entrenched in the societal shades of rejection, feminism, racism and cultural identity crisis. Nov 7, 2018 | Rating: 2.5/4 | Full Review…
...a provocative essence of the well-received 19-century costume drama. British-Ghanaian filmmaker Amma Asante oversees an inviting and lyrical exposition entrenched in the societal shades of rejection, feminism, racism and cultural identity crisis.
Frank Ochieng
All in all, it's an enjoyable film, it's just hard to see how such a powder keg of issues could burn so slowly. Nov 2, 2018 | Rating: 6/10 | Full Review…
All in all, it's an enjoyable film, it's just hard to see how such a powder keg of issues could burn so slowly.
Debbie Baldwin
Romantic, elegant and triumphant, Belle is as deft an exploration of the intersection of race, class and gender as I've seen on any kind of screen. Aug 28, 2018 | Full Review…
Romantic, elegant and triumphant, Belle is as deft an exploration of the intersection of race, class and gender as I've seen on any kind of screen.
Molly Templeton
Solid performances of a pretty remarkable story.
Super Reviewer
A handsome period drama about an admirable young woman who manages to maintain her dignity in a society ruled by certain laws that, as one character puts it, were in fact frameworks for crime - and the gracious script avoids clichés and proves to be surprisingly moving.
An very good historical film tackling slavery, race and the class system in Enlightenment Era Britain. Excellent costumes and locations with a typically outstanding performance by Tom Wilkinson. Gugu Mbatha-Raw portrays strength and incredible vulnerability in a very effective way. Good performances all around -- well, except for Draco Malfoy who bumbles through the plot line like a Slytherin trapped in his Harry Potter school days. Despite Felton and the not-quite-ready-for-prime-time sound editor, the film is really, really worth seeing.
Where Belle really gets interesting is when it delves into the history of the era. The details of the Zong slave-ship massacre becomes a landmark case in the courts. Lord Mansfield is the Chief Justice presiding over the case when the insurance company refuses to pay for the loss of the human cargo. He must determine whether the slave trading company can collect on the slaves that were deliberately thrown overboard when the ship ran out of drinking water. Will Belle's influence have an effect on him? Woven into this account is a would-be suitor (James Norton) whose mother is tempted by Belle's sizeable dowry. After all she is still heir to her father's fortune. His brother is a hissable villain played by Malfoy, er uh pardon me, Tom Felton. There's also an idealistic abolitionist (Sam Reid) of a lower class who provides some romantic spark. The cast is uniformly great, but none better than Gugu Mbatha-Raw, a British woman of South African descent. She embodies the title role with dignity and grace. Her personality is restrained, yet resolved. A gorgeous countenance highlighted by her remarkably expressive eyes convey all manner of emotion even without words. Belle is captivating and presages the arrival of an exciting new talent. fastfilmreviews.com
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