This review may contain spoilers.

This movie is not fully animated. At least not in the traditional sense. Most of the motion in the movie consists of the camera panning over long strips of paper showing the progression of the story from right to left. This is not to say there is a complete lack of animation. There's enough of that, and though basic, it fits in its elementary - and at times primal - methodology. You'll need to watch this one with an open mind and a healthy dose of patience.

This mechanism is important to how the movie delivers the story. It allows a gradual change in the tone and mood of what's going on. In a certain scene, for example, a crowd of people seems content, but as the scene goes on, the faces shift, the colors darken, and an angry mob emerges. This kind of transition is often reinforced with sounds and colors, another important element of storytelling. The red of passion and violence (of which there is a lot), the pink of beauty, the green-yellow of evil and sickness, and even the black of nothingness for a pause.

I mentioned passion and violence. This movie swims in those. Nudity is not hidden nor implied. drawings of breasts, vulvas, and penes dance on the screen while orgies of all genders and even a couple of animals blend into violent rivers or red. The cliche elements are here: sex is evil (the devil is shaped like a large penis); pleasure is sin; women corrupt. It's all there and might rub certain folks the wrong way. This is also a good point to mention that rape is a part of this movie. If this is a hard line for you in movie watching, I'd sit this one out.

But this movie doesn't dwell on cliches, and just as I was about to roll my eyes, the movie ask something I didn't see coming.

"Who says anger and hatred are ugly," the devil asks Jeanne after she sold her soul to him. The scene is painted with colorful butterflies, while soft bells chime in the background. Jeane lays naked after, having an orgasm of a lifetime. Can such a thing be fundamentally evil? And if not, are we evil for teaching it is? It's an uncomfortable question to ask, and I was happy to see that not only the film didn't shy away from it, but chose it as a focal point. There is no peace without war, and there's no haven without hell.

The movie draws a direct connection to women in the French Revolution, not too long after they were considered to be witches. The fear of men of women is everywhere in this film. There's a woman who wants to have sex with her husband more often but knows contraception is against god. they are too poor to afford to have more kids. She decides to use contraceptives anyway (a gift from Jeanne, who is called a witch at this point) and finds happiness not just for her husband but for herself.

It's not a coincidence that at the end, when the "witch" Jeanne is burned at the stake, it's not a stake at all: it's a cross. She suffered continuously by the hand of the people she worked hard to serve and help with the aid of the devil. These were the same folks who stood silent while she was burned alive.

An interesting question is not "was this woman evil," but the underlying one: is the devil, who helped the woman and through the abilities, he gave her helped the people, evil, or is it god, who's teachings caused such an artifact of beauty good will be destroyed? Are we born into sin, or are the teachings of the priests the ones who turn us into monsters?

There was nothing evil about Jeanne: not at the beginning of the movie and not at the end. Even when she thirsts for revenge and goes after the people, perhaps blamed for the Black Death in the film, one has to recall the nightmare she spent her waking life living. Why wouldn't she want revenge? Wouldn't we? Don't we?