I normally don’t care for period dramas, particularly those drawn from Jane Austen novels, with everyone acting so proper and using five words when one will do. The real-life inspired Belle is a beautiful, handsomely realized exception, thanks in equal parts to its unique premise and a clutch of fine performances.
Set during the 1700s, it tells of Dido Belle (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), the real-life mixed-race daughter of a Royal Navy officer (Matthew Goode) and a West Indies slave girl. When Belle’s mother dies, Goode brings Belle to England and places her in the begrudging care of his uncle (Tom Wilkinson) and aunt (Emily Watson), where she is raised as an aristocrat, albeit with an asterisk.
People still act proper here, to be sure, and there’s the usual fretting and gossiping about whom Belle and her sister-cousin (Sarah Gadon) should hook up with to ensure good lives. But Belle’s being of mixed-race throws an interesting wrench in to the normal potential-marriage-material works that is consideration of political status and financial standing. (Tom Felton, aka Harry Potter’s Draco Malfoy, plays a lout of a prospective suitor, further cementing his future playing movie louts.)
Not content to simply give the Jane Austen template a racial twist, writer Misan Sagay and director Amma Asante also involve Belle in a real-life British legal affair, Gregson vs. Gilbert, which involved slaves being tossed off a slave ship. They integrate this element smoothly, as Wilkinson’s uncle character is none other than Chief Lord Justice William Murray Mansfield, who ruled on the case.
The ruling was a landmark in British history, and though we know its outcome, and that Belle had no actual involvement in the case, Asante nonetheless manages to make the buildup to the verdict quite compelling. It also allows us to meet the passionately anti-slavery, son-of-a-vicar lawyer (Sam Reid) with whom Belle falls in love, and in whom she also finds an intellectual equal.
As Belle, the beautiful Mbatha-Raw is terrific, radiating intelligence and compassion and nicely conveying her character’s dawning awareness of her unusual yet unenviable station in life. And Wilkinson, who should have won an Oscar by now, makes yet another case as to why, bringing to strong life a man dealing, all at once, with family and the laws and racial mores of the time. – [DVD/Blu-Ray]
Drama
Rated PG
DVD Release Date: 8/26/14
