Les Triplettes de Belleville (a.k.a. Belleville Rendez-Vous or The Triplets of Bellville)
August 2004 Reviewed by: Wes Marshall Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

This is the story of a sweet but tough granny who wants to make sure her grandson has the best possible shot at winning the Tour de France. During the race, he runs afoul of the Mafia, who kidnap him. Granny enlists a legendary singing group, the now ancient Triplets of Bellville, to help her save her grandson. If the story sounds simple, rest assured that it is rich with complexity.

We are currently in one of the most fertile times for animation in the history of film. Pixar keeps churning out wonderful entertainment (Toy Story, Finding Nemo); and the Japanese continue to hatch unbelievable talent like Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke), Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) and Satoshi Kon (Millennium Actress). Now, springing onto the world of film with a vision that is both disorienting and heartwarming, Sylvain Chomet delivers Les Triplettes de Belleville.

Chomet’s film is sui generis, but here’s a stab at describing it. Imagine if Otto Messmer (creator of the 1919 version of the animated Felix the Cat) and Dave Fleischer (creator of the pre-Hayes Act Betty Boop) had a bastard child who experimented with LSD while drawing cartoons aimed at appealing to intellectual adults first and children second. Now you have an idea of Chomet’s style. But also picture in this mix a sepia-toned animated stage production where a half-naked Josephine Baker emerges on stage wearing only some bananas and doing the shimmy. Suddenly, all the men in the audience turn into monkeys and jump on stage to eat her bananas. Then Fred Astaire comes out and starts dancing so furiously that his shoes jump off his feet, sprout teeth and eat Astaire alive! Add to that a film score with affection for the French version of Le Jazz Hot, including Django Reinhart comping with a big band, while the Triplets sing close harmony. All of this happens at a breathless pace within the first three and a half minutes.

Sylvain Chomet has had a successful career as a comic-strip author, but has always had an interest in feature-length animation. After working for a few years helping other animators, he finally created the 25-minute short, La Vieille dame et les pigeons. This gave Chomet access to the moneymen and he was able to put together the funding for Les Triplettes de Belleville. The list on the back of the DVD devotes as much space to the investors as it does to the cast and crew! That’s an amazing feat when you consider the boundaries Chomet was intending to push. In fact, Chomet told the website Animation World Magazine (an excellent resource for fans of the genre), "But what I am really interested in is drawing caricature, how far you can push it, seeing if you can achieve something really strong, almost abstract." One look at the bodies of the bicycle riders or the mafiosa and you’ll see he succeeded.

Another oddity -- Chomet chose to make a movie with almost no dialogue. I didn’t go back and count, but I’m willing to bet there aren’t 50 words spoken in the entire film. One of the side effects of this silence is whenever you see a character’s face, the artist has the opportunity to make his point with pure art, instead of being tied to the normal animation concept of a stationary talking head. It takes more work, but the end result carries far more depth.

Sony Pictures Classics gives us a DVD with a beautifully clear picture and superb sonic transparency. Unfortunately, they’ve shortchanged us on extras. Given the prestige and quality of the film, Sony should have pulled out all the stops. For instance, I’d love to see how the film was scripted or how the music was planned and written. Or how about some live-versus-animated shots to show how they used Django Reinhart, Fred Astaire, and Josephine Baker in the opening scenes? Even better, why don’t they give us Chomet’s short -- La Vieille dame et les pigeons? At least what we do get is high in quality, especially the intelligent interviews with the charming Chomet. And if the movie hasn’t fulfilled your psychedelia quotient for the day, tune into the mesmerizing music video, "Belleville Rendez-vous," which is about the strangest thing I’ve seen since Eraserhead.

For those of you who haven’t yet experienced the overwhelming enchantment of this film, I give Les Triplettes de Belleville my highest possible recommendation. This is desert-island material.

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