A teenager in rural Japan finds online fame through a virtual concert in Mamoru Hosoda’s latest animated feature
When "Belle" hits stardom, it does so with otherworldly power—a teen singer's first concert draws a crowd of nearly 200 million. The venue is truly supernatural, however, as there is a virtual-reality site called Yu, and an incarnation of the newly created diva Belle, the spectacular cyberspace projection of Suzu, a dysfunctional high-schooler, who turns her real life into a short life. has won. Rural city in Japan. This ambitious anime feature from Mamoru Hosoda connects the two worlds as Suzu makes her way through a troubled adolescence, and the story includes an elaborate crackdown on "Beauty and the Beast." The film has too much plot to manage, but its heart and brilliant art are so firmly in the right place that its appeal is sweet and clear. (A GKIDS production, "Belle," is playing in theaters in a subtitled version that I watched for review, and also in a dubbed version, which may be more accessible to younger audiences.)
In Mr. Hosoda's previous feature, 2018's Oscar-nominated "Mirai", the 4-year-old protagonist, Kun, is alone as his younger sister takes his place at the center of his family. Suzu's sadness has deep roots; She is inconsolable since her mother's death years ago. Kun's loneliness grows until he comes across a magic garden, where he meets past and future visitors from his family alike. Suzu's Asylum is more contemporary, highlighting the kinds of Metaverse alternatives only to the reality that Google, Apple, Oculus—and who knows—Whatulus might have ready for our online future.
Visionary representations of cyberspace have become a staple of sci-fi films, from the trashy but clever prediction "Johnny Mnemonic" to "The Matrix" in all its iterations in 1995. (Keanu Reeves was the star in both cases.) Suzu's avatar is a bright-faced, freckle-cheeked and princess-newcomer on the global stage as thrilling as it is momentary, and who's to make Suzu happy? Suddenly he's part of a new community—five billion users who don't think they're being used, living a billion-point-of-light universe filled with shimmering cities, fictional creatures, and twinkling artifacts. ("I'm an AI," chirps a little white sprite. "I know everything.") But Yu's online world—as in Another You—isn't heaven. Suzu's concert is crashed by a monstrous dragon, simply called a dragon, which can easily and rightly be mistaken for an animal unlike Suzu's beauty. She doesn't make that connection. Nevertheless, Suzu sees that the dragon is in pain, and she feels it deeply.
The clash of elements and themes can be disturbing, even in a film about extreme volatile emotions. The fate of the symbolic dragon, pursued to its castle by a self-righteous cybervigilant, is suddenly changed by Suzu's literal-minded determination to find the human soul mate behind the victim's avatar. Her quest then becomes a detective story, with arbitrary twists and turns, which leads her to an upscale residential neighborhood in Tokyo. There, in a sequence that appears to be linked to another film, she quickly discovers a case of child abuse and a shocking case.
But “Belle” has the courage of her clumsiness, which can be the price of several eloquent moments that pop up suddenly, almost out of nowhere. In one of them a battered child repeats the word "help" contemptuously, and more times than you can count, scolding adults who talk a good game about being helpful but something in the end. do not. And part of the film's impact comes from the difference between its two scene modes. Suzu's life at home and school is presented in a gentle, even melancholy style that appears to be hand-drawn animation, while explosive, computer-generated cyberspace images illustrate the state of many young people's online lives. does.
The paradox, of course, of what passes for reality in the film is that the potential dangers of the online experience—the fragmentation, randomness, and easy-to-access anonymity—that make it so tempting for young minds. In that context, it is even more dramatic when Suzu, through Belle, reveals her true identity to her legions of pagan followers. Mr. Hosoda's film won't take his followers off their phones, tablets and screens, and it's not meant to be. All he can do, without a lot of precepts, is remind them of the power of authenticity. It's not Belle's costumes, bling or celebrity that gets people enchanted. It is Suzu herself, singing her ornate song.