Film Review - The Triplets of Belleville

The Triplets of Belleville is Sylvain Chomet’s 2003 animated film, which follows some rather unique yet appealing characters on a bizarre journey. With very little dialogue, the audience are shown the life of Madame Souza, an elderly woman living in France. With her, lives her grandson Champion, who is training to race in the Tour de France, and their loyal dog, Bruno. After being introduced to these characters and their daily training routine of cycling around the city, it paints a rather lifeless picture of their everyday lives, with the characters not showing much emotion or excitement, which can also be also be due to the lack of dialogue. Nevertheless, the glimpses of what they each get up to is charmingly representative of interesting character and everyday life, not forgetting Bruno, the overweight dog that spends his days barking at passing trains without fail. While a series of bizarre events unfold one after another, Madame Souza finds herself uniting with the elderly Triplets of Belleville (who were once a famous singing trio) in order to rescue her son from the French Mafia, after they kidnap him and a few other racers during the Tour de France race.

Figure. 1. The Triplets of Belleville film poster.

The film has a sombre tone, both with the Mise en scène, in addition to the lack of speech and expression of happiness, which sets the mood of the environment and world solidly. “Most animated features have an almost grotesque desire to be loved. This one doesn’t seem to care. It creates a world of selfishness, cruelty, corruption and futility — but it’s not serious about this world and it doesn’t want to attack it or improve upon it. It simply wants to sweep us up in its dark comic vision.” (Ebert, 2003) 

Although the story itself is wacky and extraordinary, the film is still very appealing and captures real life familiarity in character exceedingly well. The film succeeds at capturing not the beauty within individual characters, but the ugliness of them, caricaturing their features, and having each character embody this exaggeration of real life personality that we see around us everyday, but seem to forget about a lot, as it can easily become lost within most animation and film, in the process of trying to capture cuteness and attractiveness in characters. Whilst this film isn’t particularly realistic looking, it certainly does go after the details of character and essence of everyday life, ironically creating the humour through the un-attractiveness that we recognise in the real world every day. “Chomet demonstrates a remarkable ability to signify the touchingly human without suffocating the rest of the work in crippling, syrupy Disney-esque overtness that overwhelms so many American animated films.” (Vasquez & Gonzalez, 2004) 

Figure. 2. The Triplets of Belleville film still.

Despite the film’s unconcern to capture perfection and beauty in the characters attractiveness, the same cannot be said for the animation, which in itself is masterfully detailed and so elaborate that it captures the illusion of life incredibly. Although the world isn’t outrageously upbeat and positive, it doesn’t lack appeal, and that is probably thanks to the impressive craft of animation, which gives this world the ability to stand out so strongly and grasp the audience so tightly. “The animation itself is superbly detailed and vividly eccentric, and as for the story - it’s impossible to tell if it’s a children’s story for adults or an adult’s story for children. Or if it matters.” (Bradshaw, 2003) 

Illustration List

Figure.1. Rotten Tomatoes, The Triplets of Belleville film poster. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_triplets_of_belleville [Accessed 30/04/19]

Figure. 2. Cartoon Brew, The Triplets of Belleville film still. https://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/the-triplets-of-belleville-15th-anniversary-7-insights-into-the-making-of-a-contemporary-classic-159630.html [Accessed 30/04/19]

Bibliography

Bradshaw P. (2003) https://www.theguardian.com/film/News_Story/Critic_Review/Guardian_review/0,4267,1030893,00.html [Accessed 30/04/19] 

Ebert R. (2003) https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-triplets-of-belleville-2003 [Accessed 30/04/19] 

Vasquez J & Gonzalez E. (2004) https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.slantmagazine.com/dvd/the-triplets-of-belleville/amp/ [Accessed 30/04/19]