Belle (2014, PG)

 

I’m in the Cities for Pride, and I thought why not make it Pride and a show (or two?)  Saints be praised, the movies I missed are still in a few nearby theaters.  Let’s kick things off with Belle.

 

This lovely film is based on the true story of Dido Belle Lindsay, the illegitimate biracial daughter of an aristocratic British naval captain in the 18^th century.  After the death of her mother, Dido’s father officially acknowledges the young girl, giving her his last name and bringing her to be raised by his aunt and uncle while he is at sea.  She grows up alongside her white cousin Elizabeth, who is also illegitimate but unacknowledged by her own father. 

 

As you might imagine, the historical context gives Dido a vast and complex social system to navigate, especially when her father is killed at sea and leaves her his fortune.  Her great aunt and uncle love her dearly, and Elizabeth is like a sister to her, but from the start, she’s given a laundry list of rules that she alone must follow:  guidelines that dictate when she is and isn’t allowed to show her face.  She also lives in an England that is growing increasingly divided on the issue of slavery, a debate that her great uncle strives to keep her from hearing.

 

Dido is played excellently by the gorgeous Gugu Mbatha-Raw, who was Martha’s sister Tish on Doctor Who.  She’s intelligent and curious, sensitive and passionate, proud and willful.  She carries herself with a haughtiness that she wraps protectively about her, a coping mechanism against her situation.  She knows, for example, that the “mere” son of a vicar would be invited to her great uncle’s dinner table before she, a lady of the house, would be granted the same honor.  So, she pulls rank with others before they can do so with her and clings to the conventions with which she’s been raised, even though they stifle her at every turn.

 

So many fascinating layers are at play here.  Watching young Dido (no more than 6 or 7) play with Elizabeth, her great aunt and uncle decide that she will never marry; any man who would “overlook” her skin color and deign to marry her wouldn’t be of sufficient class for her father’s bloodline.  Meanwhile, Elizabeth, who, unlike Dido, has no inheritance to provide for her, is unable to find anyone to marry a beautiful and lively – but penniless – girl.  Additionally, Dido has no guide to contextualize her own blackness.  She only has her family’s contradictory “some animals are more equal than others” rules to go by, as well as the family portraits that show black slaves in subservient, diminished positions beside her white ancestors.  She doesn’t even know how her curly hair needs to be combed; it isn’t until her family arrives in London for the season that a black maid teaches her the proper way (shades of Suzanne on Orange is the New Black.) 

 

Joining Gugu Mbatha-Raw are Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson as her great aunt and uncle.  Miranda Richardson and fellow Who alum Penelope Wilton (Harriet Jones!) are also in the film, and Matthew Goode, who I loved in A Single Man, makes a brief appearance as her father.  Plus, there’s Tom Felton, a.k.a. Draco Malfoy, who seems to be making a career out of playing slimy, bigoted little creeps – lucky him.

 

Warnings

 

Thematic elements, some language (including racist remarks,) and a little smoking/drinking.