Reviews for this film from our members:
- [New – 7/4/14] | Rick Aragon @ Rick’s Cafe Texan
- Excerpt: It isn’t often that a true story mixes race and class in a Jane Austenesque setting, but Belle manages to tell a fascinating, if somewhat dry, story lifted up by a career-making performance that hopefully will lead to greater roles for its star, Gugu Mbatha-Raw.
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat @ SpiritualityandPractice.com
- Excerpt: An eighteenth-century costume drama that lights up the screen with a beautiful mixed race heroine, an idealistic law student, and a circle of older English aristocrats whose most cherished traditions are challenged.
- Kevin Carr @ 7M Pictures
- Excerpt: Walking out of the film, I felt like I had been bound in a corset like the one worn by the main character. But that’s not to say the film wasn’t good.
- Laura Clifford @ Reeling Reviews
- Excerpt: Using only minor dramatic license, Sagay and director Amma Asante have crafted a historical period romance that tackles racism with all the social intricacies of a Jane Austen novel.
- Tony Dayoub @ Cinema Viewfinder
- Excerpt: BELLE gives voice to women of color and Asante and Mbatha-Raw prove that they are worthy of being heard.
- Susan Granger @ www.susangranger.com
- Excerpt: Sumptuous historical melodrama – too bad it’s a bit stultifying.
- Mark Hobin @ Fast Film Reviews
- Excerpt: Actress Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s gorgeous countenance is highlighted by her remarkably expressive eyes which convey all manner of emotion without words. Belle is captivating and presages the arrival of an exciting new talent.
- MaryAnn Johanson @ FlickFilosopher.com
- Excerpt: Wonderful true story about a mixed-race woman raised in an aristocratic British family in the late 18th century; like the best Jane Austen romance with an angry social conscience.
- Dan Lybarger @ Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
- Excerpt: Belle does wrestle with a corner of history that most books have avoided. Nonetheless, those are the corners that most worth exploring.
- Frank Ochieng @ Sound on Sight
- Excerpt: There is no question about the absolute elegance and cautionary observations that captures the provocative essence of the well-received 19-century costume drama Belle.
- Jonathan Richards @ www.jonrichardsplace.com
- Excerpt: Sagay and Assante do a powerful job of weaving together the intricacies of British law and custom among the aristocracy, where matters of race, gender, position, and wealth tangle like brambles in a garden, and it’s sometimes a revelation to see which prejudices and restrictions are strongest.
- Cole Smithey @ ColeSmithey.com
- Excerpt: [VIDEO ESSAY] “Belle” is a quiet triumph of women’s filmmaking.
- Frank Swietek @ One Guys Opinion
- Excerpt: An engrossing, beautifully appointed, if somewhat prosaic and historically loose, docu-drama.
- Mel Valentin @ ScreenInvasion.com
- Excerpt: Jane Austen meets Amistad
