“So, what does it actually mean when Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle received a 14-minute ovation at Cannes [last] summer? It means, presumably, that French audiences rated it much higher than Moonrise Kingdom (2012, 5 minutes), and more than Twin Peaks (2017, 5 minutes). It means that, by some odd metric of hands smacking together, it was worth more than Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019, 7 minutes), better in some way than BlackkKlansman (2018, 10 minutes), and a smidgen more entertaining than Bowling for Columbine (2002, 13 minutes).”

With Mamoru Hosoda’s Belle receiving its UK-wide cinema release this Friday, I thought it was a good time to re-link to my article about it from October over on All the Anime.