By Nicole Veneto

Belle didn’t quite make my heart sing, but it’s a nice change of pace to see a film that treats the internet as a place that can bring people together, not merely a cutthroat Thunder Dome of clashing egos and verbal slap fights.

Belle, directed by Mamoru Hosoda. Now playing subtitled and dubbed in select theaters, including Cambridge’s Kendall Square Cinema.

A scene from Belle. Photo: GKIDS

Mamoru Hosoda keeps making the same movie over and over again, and for once that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The Oscar-nominated anime director (Mirai) first dabbled in virtual worlds with 2000’s Digimon Adventure: Our War Game!, wherein two children battle a computer virus, using digital monsters to stop a nuclear missile from hitting Japan. His 2003 short for Louis Vuitton, Superflat Monogram, sees a little girl sucked into a kaleidoscopic Wonderland after a mascot panda swallows her cell phone. Come Summer Wars (2009), Hosoda’s fascination with what happens inside our computers took on a refined sense of scale, visualizing the digital realm as a vast, colorful social network called OZ full of endless possibilities and modes of being. Most iterations of “the Hosoda sphere” render the online world a liminal arena where communities band together for a great good, usually against a rogue AI threatening real world annihilation. The stakes are significantly lower (i.e., more personal) in Belle, but Hosoda’s latest film once again sees the director’s preoccupation with digital spaces taken to new heights, this time as a fairy-tale infused coming-of-age story where understanding yourself and the pains suffered by those around you are one and the same process.

Much like OZ, the world of U in Belle functions as the other side of reality’s looking glass, a massive virtual community over five billion strong that uses body-sharing technology to generate avatars (an “A.S.”) based on the person’s “biometric data.” As an omniscient voice informs us at the beginning, “U is another reality, and A.S. is another you. You may not be able to start over in the real world, but you can start over in the world of U.” Try to imagine VRChat without renegade gangs of Ugandan Knuckles the Echidna clones or unsupervised eight-year-olds running around as Naruto. (Hosoda’s depictions of the internet skew towards a utopian idealism rather than a chaotic hell-world governed by shit-posting trolls.) Haunted by the drowning death of her mother as a child, 17-year-old Suzu (voiced in English by newcomer Kylie McNeil) has grown into a painfully shy wallflower, internalizing a sense of abandonment that’s kept her distant from everyone in her life except for her tech-savvy best friend, Hiroka (Jessica DiCicco). Though a naturally gifted singer, Suzu’s childhood trauma has manifested into a crippling voiceless anxiety and fear of singing in front of others; even when she is by herself, Suzu can’t summon the confidence to sing without throwing up.

When Hiroka goads Suzu into creating an account on U, she’s given another chance to find her voice in the guise of her A.S., a beautiful pink-haired songstress named Belle who bears more of a resemblance to Suzu’s popular childhood friend Ruka (Euphoria’s Hunter Schafer, a fellow anime fan) than to the freckled introvert. After a show-stopping musical debut in U, Belle goes viral overnight, sky-rocketing Suzu’s alter-ego to anonymous fame on and offline, with Hiroka lending support as her digital fairy godmother. While Suzu’s intent on keeping Belle’s identity a secret, she nonetheless delights in being able to sing again, this time with a newfound confidence inaccessible to her in real life. Just before Belle takes the stage for a massive virtual concert, her performance is interrupted by a mysterious A.S. known as “The Dragon” (Paul Castro Jr.), a beastly avatar feared by U’s users and hunted by a group of self-righteous mods led by the corporate-sponsored Justin (Gossip Girls’ Chace Crawford of all people). Sensing there’s more behind The Dragon’s anger than his monstrous reputation lets on, Suzu/Belle sets out to find the person behind the account in hopes of understanding their pain (and her own in turn).

A climactic scene from Belle. Photo: GKIDS

Though Belle presents itself as a virtual retelling of Beauty and the Beast, those looking for a sweeping romance in cyberspace may come away disappointed. Disney’s 1991 film aside, the tale as old as time has undergone multiple big-screen adaptations over the years, from Jean Cocteau’s surrealist 1946 classic to Juraj Herz’s grimy gothic romance (a neglected iteration and my personal favorite). Hosoda is less interested in adapting de Beaumont’s story than he is in using its tropes to embellish a standard coming-of-age narrative into a visually resplendent journey of self-discovery. Belle and The Dragon aren’t fated lovers but kindred spirits whose paths happen to cross in virtual reality. The relationship between the two unfolds according to a mutual sense of pain and isolation they experience in the outside world, not through any sort of romantic connection. All pretense toward romance is dropped by the final act when it’s revealed that The Dragon is a 14 year-old boy and his younger brother living in fear of their physically abusive father. It’s certainly a subversive twist on the source material, but by sidestepping the romantic angle, Belle spreads itself a little too thin on a metaphorical level for the core conceit to be wholly satisfying.

Similarly, I found the animation to be a bit underwhelming compared to Hosoda’s previous work. There’s no doubt that Belle is a visual feast for the eyes, opening big with one of Belle’s impromptu virtual performances where she sings to hundreds of thousands of unique avatars from atop a flying whale, its back outfitted with massive speakers (the dream parade in Satoshi Kon’s Paprika immediately comes to mind). Being another “Hosoda sphere,” U shares many of the same visual characteristics that made Summer Wars’ OZ such a unique representation of virtual reality. But the more CG-heavy scenes in U lack the sort of fluidity that traditional 2D animation provides, rendering Belle’s choreography stiff and The Dragon’s punches impactless. Nevertheless, there are enough moments of awe-inspiring visual splendor supplied to make me regret not seeing the film in IMAX when I had the chance. Mention should also be given to McNeil’s vocal performance in GKIDS’ English dub, the tomboyish gruffness she brings to Suzu’s voice giving way to Belle’s effervescent soprano when she sings. The girl’s got some serious pipes, and you’ll still be humming Belle’s catchy melodies days after you’ve left the theater.

Although Belle didn’t quite make my heart sing, it’s a nice change of pace to see a film that treats the internet as a place that can bring people together, not merely a cutthroat Thunder Dome of clashing egos and verbal slap fights. Many filmmakers see technology as an atomizing force that empowers our worst behaviors for the sake of increasing views and follows. For the more hopeful Hosoda, digital connections present new ways in which people will be able to understand each other. Belle isn’t the movie you think it’ll be, but it provides a necessary reminder that beautiful things reside within ourselves and our technology.

Nicole Veneto graduated from Brandeis University with an MA in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, concentrating on feminist media studies. Her writing has been featured in MAI Feminism & Visual Culture, Film Matters Magazine, and Boston University’s Hoochie Reader. She’s the co-host of the new podcast Marvelous! Or, the Death of Cinema. You can follow her on Letterboxd and Twitter @kuntsuragi for weird and niche movie recommendations.