|
Triplets of Belleville, The |
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, 06 July 2004 |
  Maybe most people's sense of weird has lowered, or maybe mine is a bit too high, but with all the talk about how strange The Triplets of Belleville is, I was expecting a lot more weirdness than I got. That's not to say it isn't unusual, because it is. The world created in Belleville is at least slightly out of skew. Many things are just just a bit exaggerated. Unlike virtually all current animation, colors are pastel instead of bright and saturated. The "camera" view is often super wide angle, with the characters' faces viewed from very close, so their features and expressions are exaggerated. The animation also seems to be an interesting combination of hand drawn and computer generated. Overall, the visual style is quite interesting.
The Triplets of Belleville opens with a TV variety show featuring the triplets singing their song Belleville Rendezvous, which is actually the original name of the movie. The show is a mixture of early 20th century entertainers and musicians. Fred Astaire makes as appearance as does a topless Josephine Baker, who turns all the male audience members into leering monkeys. The pit orchestra includes legendary guitarist Django Reinhardt and appears to be directed by a Marx brother. The show ends with an enormous dancing baby.
Now is when the picture expands from its initial 4:3 aspect to the final 16:9 widescreen, the audio changes from crackly mono to full range surround sound and the actual story begins. We meet Madame Souza, who is raising her grandson to be a champion bike racer. As the years pass, the city surrounding Madame Souza's home grows and becomes more modern. There is even a railroad bridge literally pushing her house sideways. This contributes to some of the funniest moments early in the film as her dog Bruno runs upstairs to bark at the train every time it passes.
Madame Souza ruthlessly trains her grandson until his legs are bigger than the rest of him. Her goal is for him to win the Tour de France, but once he is participating in the race, he is kidnapped by a group of dark gangsters. She follows the captors to an enormous cruise ship, but unable to get aboard, she and her faithful dog follow the ship in a paddle boat all the way to Belleville, a metropolis which is a thinly camouflaged New York City. Now she joins up with the triplets in an effort to rescue her grandson.
I'm not sure when was the last time I laughed so much at a movie, at least during the first 30 minutes or so. The beginning of this film was so funny, it seemed there was no way it could continue at that pace, and it doesn't. The dog Bruno barking at passing trains was oddly hilarious and the way Madame Souza communicated only by blowing a whistle often had me nearly rolling on the floor. I swore the driver at the Tour de France was going to dispose of that whistle in some less than friendly way.
Unfortunately, the film takes a rather cheap turn once it arrives in Belleville and becomes mostly another tired exercise in America bashing. The city Madame Souza finds herself in is populated by greed, violence and, most of all, obscene obesity. The view lingers on and on, from a low angle, as walls of elephants disguised as people rumble down the street in slow motion. Even the Statue of Liberty is obese. I am sure all this is wonderfully hilarious in other parts of the world, but it is nothing more than an easy and rather childish attempt at humor. Unfortunately, this tempered my enthusiasm for the last several minutes of the film. Even though it continues to be original and visually stimulating, it was tainted in a way I couldn't quite overlook.
Starring: Voices of: Jean-Claude Donda, Michel Robin, Monica Viegas, Betty Bonifassi, Marie-Lou Gauthier, Line Boudreault.
Director: Sylvain Chomet
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Rated: PG-13
Running Time: 80 minutes
Release: 2003
Reviewer: John Rice |
Movie Article List 
