Les Triplettes de Belleville

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you gave Jerry Lewis a pen and asked him to animate a movie?

French writer / director Sylvain Chomet had the creative (if you can call it that) vision to try to accomplish just that, at least, I think he did.

Les Triplettes de Belleville (The Triplets of Belleville for us ignorant Americans) is a story of a grandmother fighting to recapture his kidnapped grandson. Her grandson was a lead rider in the Tour De France when he was abducted and taken to Belleville. Madame Souza, his grandmother follows her son across the sea, where she meets up with the Triplets, a song and dance trio from the vaudevillian era. Together, they plan a daring rescue for her son.

I will say, the animation is absolutely incredible, added to the fact that almost the entire movie is presented through the pictorial displays on screen. There are most likely a dozen or so lines of actual dialog in the film, so it doesn’t matter much that the movie is in French and lacks subtitles. The film is an interesting study of perspective, and has some truly amazing animated scenes. The artistic vision of many of the images of the movie are truly wild. The animation is just enough away from reality to cast a shadow of imagination over the entire film.

Overall, it was difficult to get into the film, or feel for the characters. They were all so flat, and seemingly mechanical, not through the animation, but through the design of the characters. Each character moves slowly, but they seem to lack volition or purpose. There were many humorous scenes, and a couple that made my skin crawl. I often wondered if I had slipped into the Spike and Mike’s Sick and Twisted film festival.