Belle has had a beautiful start. The eighth feature from Mamoru Hosoda premiered out of competition at Cannes yesterday, reportedly earning a 14-minute standing ovation.
The audience’s enthusiastic reaction is backed up by strong reviews. “Belle has the look of a winner for the teen set,” writes Deborah Young in The Hollywood Reporter. “The visuals are often astounding.”
Indiewire’s David Ehrlich was a little more measured in his praise: “[W]hile [Hosoda’s] most ambitious moonshot to date isn’t quite able to arrange all of its moving parts together along the same orbit, it’s impressive to see how many of them remain moving all the same.”