Belladonna of Sadness

In medieval France, two newlyweds named Jeanne and Jean scrape together everything they own to present a dowry to their local lord. It does not go well. What happens to Jeanne that night is brutal and traumatic, and the film does not look away from it. What makes it worse is that her husband, the person who should be her shelter, completely fails her afterward. Left isolated and hollowed out, Jeanne eventually encounters something — a strange, otherworldly presence — that offers her a different kind of future. That's roughly where the story begins to shift in directions you won't see coming. The whole thing is shot in a style unlike anything else in anime: long watercolor panels that drift and dissolve into each other, heavily influenced by Art Nouveau and psychedelic illustration. It's closer to a moving painting than a conventional film. The soundtrack is equally strange and hypnotic. If you appreciated the surreal feminist symbolism of Revolutionary Girl Utena or the psychological unraveling in Perfect Blue, this movie operates in similar emotional territory — except it predates both by decades and hits differently because of how raw and unconventional its visuals are. Fair warning: this is not an easy watch. It's a 1973 experimental film dealing with assault, powerlessness, and dark spiritual forces. But if you're in the mood for something genuinely unlike anything else you've seen, Belladonna of Sadness is a singular experience.