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In Beauty and the Beast (2017) movie, the enchantress cursed the prince to teach him a lesson (that's why there was a way to break the curse) and possibly to destroy his ego.

Initially, the prince was a cold-hearted man who used to enjoy the company of beautiful girls, but never valued love. So, she cursed him.

There were two ways to break the curse:

  • Predefined set of algorithms decide. If he loves a girl and he is also loved by her, the curse breaks.

  • The enchantress manually breaks the curse.

Based on the first way, my question is: Why did the enchantress create such an algorithm? Why was falling for someone as in one-way love not enough for the enchantress?

Based on the second way, my question is: When the Beast started feeling love for Belle, why didn't the enchantress remove the curse?

What exactly did the enchantress want? Why is being loved by someone important?

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    Because it's not Twu Wuv
    – DisturbedNeo
    May 15, 2017 at 11:25

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The Beast turned away the enchantress because she was ugly. As it says in the original movie's prologue:

Repulsed by her haggard appearance, the prince sneered at the gift and turned the old woman away, but she warned him not to be deceived by appearances, for beauty is found within.

She was teaching him a lesson. By turning him into a beast, not only did he have to fall in love with someone (which is easy) he had to convince that someone to fall in love with him even though he happened to be a beast. That was the real part of the curse. She was trying to stop him from being "spoiled, selfish, and unkind" (also from the original) by convincing him that "true beauty comes from within." This is the moral of the story.

When he started loving Belle, he was no different than before. The enchantress had to make sure that he felt the other side of the spectrum (loving something beautiful but not being loved in return because of his appearance.) To break the spell, he had to realize how love and beauty worked. I always took the title to be about the Beast and beauty, not Belle and the beast.

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    Was convincing a girl to fall for him that difficult? He could have told her about the curse and showed her his real photo telling her that when curse breaks she would get a handsome prince.
    – Ragnarok
    May 15, 2017 at 1:36
  • When he started loving Belle, he was no different than before. ~> Actually, he was a way lot different than before. I don't know about the original, but in the 2017 movie, he was no longer arrogant and he no longer cared whether he lived or died and he even set his prisoner (Belle) free.
    – Ragnarok
    May 15, 2017 at 1:41
  • Also, falling in true love for someone is NOT easy. These things are not at your command, not to mention you have to drop your old selfish beliefs etc.
    – Ragnarok
    May 15, 2017 at 1:46
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    The interpretation of the title you mention in the last sentence can work in English, and with "death of the author" and all that this might be sufficient for some people to adopt it, but I don't think it would work for the French title of the original tale: my understanding is that "La Belle et la Bête" cannot be interpreted as meaning "the abstract concept of beauty and the beast".
    – wyvern
    May 15, 2017 at 1:56
  • @I Love You Yes, falling in true love is not easy. Making that same person fall in true love with you is even harder, especially as a ferocious beast. And he only let Belle go after he was in love with her
    – CHEESE
    May 15, 2017 at 1:58

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