Amma Asante’s Belle made a quiet premiere at TIFF last month in a festival full of bigger and louder productions, but the full trailer will hopefully generate a little bit of buzz for what looks to be a genuinely solid period drama.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw stars as Dido Elizabeth Belle, the illegitimate mixed race daughter of a Royal Navy Admiral who instructs his uncle and aunt (Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson) to bring her up as one of their own. While her connection to aristocracy affords her certain privileges she would have never known, her family’s uneasiness with the color of her skin leaves her in limbo between two worlds.
This is especially true when it comes time to find love and marriage. It’s going to be a rough time finding a family willing to let her marry in, but it’s also a decent way to indicate which men are terrible. Here’s looking at you, Tom Felton – great to see you playing a heinous jackass again. Check out the trailer here:
Belle is in theaters May 2nd, 2014.
