Thirty Great Movies You've Probably Never Seen: The Triplets of Belleville

Year:  2003

Director:  Sylvain Chomet

Trust me when I tell you  that you have never seen a movie like The Triplets of Belleville. 

First of all, it’s animated, and it’s French.  But don’t panic!  You want to give this movie a chance.

The title characters are three singing sisters who were a nightclub sensation in the 1920s.  The film begins with a look back at their heyday.  This early part of the film has a wonderful retro look and feel, and introduces the slyly seductive and irresistible song “Belleville Rendezvous,” which was nominated for an Academy Award.

The movie then switches the mid-1950s, and tells the story of a sweet and very determined old lady who is raising an oddly depressed grandson.  Maybe a tricycle will help, she thinks, and before you know it her boy becomes a champion cyclist!  Conveniently, he’s even named “Champion.”  One day, while training for the Tour de France, he’s kidnapped and taken to the city of Belleville, where he and other cyclists are forced into a bizarre sort of slavery.

However, it turns out that the goons have messed with the wrong old lady.  With her faithful dog Bruno, Granny sets out to find and rescue her missing grandson.  On her journey she meets the (now quite old) singing triplets, who have some weird habits with frogs (that’s all they eat and they gather them using hand grenades) and impromptu musical instruments (such as bicycle wheels).  They become Granny’s odd but resourceful allies in her search.

If you happen to be a fan of Jacques Tati, you will recognize what the makers of Triplets are trying to do here.  In movies like Mr. Hulot’s Holiday and Playtime, he created stories that needed no dialog.  They weren’t silent movies . . . they were just movies with no talking.  And that’s one of the things I admire the most about The Triplets of Belleville: It tells its story with virtually no dialog.  This requires a lot of narrative cleverness and invention.  (There’s a cute “Easter Egg” in the movie:  look closely and you’ll see a poster for Mr. Hulot on the wall of the triplet’s house, and there are other references to Tati’s films as well.)

One of the main strengths of animation is that it can take you into a completely new world, and that this movie truly does.  It’s a world that’s bizarre, beautiful, and a little creepy.  The movie received a PG-13 rating and was the first animated feature with that rating to ever get nominated for the Best Animated Feature Oscar (it lost to Finding Nemo). 

The animation and character design are remarkable, and the whole movie develops this out-there, almost psychedelic sway over the viewer.  From the close-ups of the dog’s chops flapping in the wind, to the hilariously exaggerated calf muscles of the cyclists, to the wedge-shaped thugs to the insane old triplets themselves, this movie takes you into a world like no other.  It’s full of amazing music and imagery.

Who needs LSD or mushrooms?  Just curl up with the insane and seductive The Triplets of Belleville. 

[Thirty Day Hub Challenge #10]