The Good: Interesting animation style
The Bad: Real annoying music, Pointless plot, Uninspired characters, Esoteric for no reason
The Basics: When a bicyclist allows himself to be kidnaped by the French mafia, his grandmother hunts him down while the audience comes to believe he just wants to get away.
Moments into The Triplets Of Belleville, I thought I would like the movie. I honestly did. The animation was intriguing and it seemed like the characters would be, at worst, interesting. The pace of the movie felt slow, but I decided then that that was fine and I should give it a fair shake. Let me tell you about how wrong I was.
Madame Souza begins the movie, quite disarmingly, as a subtle creature who has immense love for her grandson. She sees he is bored and unhappy, despite his loyal canine companion, Bruno, and she does her best to keep him happy. This takes the form of buying him a bicycle and the young boy immediately takes to it. Years, probably a decade or two, later, Souza aids her grandson in training for the Tour de France by annoyingly following him about town as he cycles, blowing a whistle to get him to move each leg. During the bicycle race, the grandson allows himself to be kidnaped by the French mafia who take him away to race in a simulation they can bet on. Souza follows him and, with the aid of the Triplets of Belleville, a trio of musical crones, attempts to rescue him.
But who cares? By the time the grandson allows himself to be captured by the Mafia, by simply giving up during the race and allowing the people who are obviously not trained medical professionals in the ambulance take him aboard, we can see why he would rather be enslaved or dead at the hands of the French mafia. His grandmother is truly that annoying. Madame Souza does not express any overt affection, instead allowing her actions to speak for her love of her grandson. The problem is, at some point, her desire for him to be happy fades into her desire for him to accomplish something at the Tour de France and her training of him, and the way she annoyingly blows the whistle at others throughout the film, becomes irritating.
The Triplets Of Belleville is plagues by more than just a dismal protagonist. The entire cast seems unlikable, outside the dog. Bruno is a cute, and obese, dog who shares a bond with the grandson. Unfortunately, even Bruno serves to illustrate the serious flaws of this movie. The most grievous problem with the movie is that there is so much in it that does not serve to create atmosphere or make a statement that if Sylvain Chomet - who wrote and directed the piece - had a point, it is truly lost. Take Bruno. Whenever a subway train passes the house where the family lives, he rushes to the window and barks at it. Why? Who knows? My point is, it never goes anywhere. It never becomes important to the story or the characters that the dog barks at the passing trains. Yet there are no less than three times we see the dog at the window barking at subway trains. It serves to kill time. I could have used the time for something meaningful.
Bruno is just one example of a pointless feature added to the movie, a theme that does not actually go anywhere or say anything. The animation itself tries quite hard to tell us something by the way people are drawn. For example, in the opening sequence, we see heavy women of wealth trotting out of fancy cars with their thin, limp men being dragged along like (quite explicitly in the last case) toilet paper. So, where does Chomet go with the visual metaphor? Nowhere. The comment is made, but it is not expanded on. It becomes a cheap joke instead of any sort of actual commentary. It does not even serve to expand the world Chomet has created in this animated feature as the rules for how different nationalities are drawn - there are some ugly americans drawn in - are negated in Belleville.
The Triplets Of Belleville wastes every opportunity to make a statement or enrich its own fictional world by forcing the viewer into a world that is esoteric for no reason. Why the French mafia considers racing the worst possible cyclists who fell off the Tour de France instead of people who might actually be entertaining, for example, is boggling. Allow me to reiterate (in case you have not read any of my other reviews); I like movies where people spend a lot of time doing nothing, but talking about things or films that take a good amount of time to establish a place, culture and time. This movie had neither of those things (I think there are only six lines of dialog in the entire movie) and it did not take long for the animation to become simply another style to look at as opposed to something innovative or even interesting.
Removing the unnecessary bits, this 78 minute movie distills down to a five minute Tom and Jerry plot and it's not original, it's not funny and it's not even weird enough to be enjoyable. Add to that, the endless, hypnotic song that permeates the movie (and will embed itself in your skull if you listen to it!) without any real meaning, and you have a movie that drags on and on a lot longer than the 78 minute promised time. It felt like two days by the time the movie ended for me.
Finally, the title is annoying in that, unlike something like 12 Monkeys where the title is not about what it is called, but it serves a purpose, The Triplets Of Belleville is a title that does not describe this movie. The Triplets are incidental characters who have little to do with the main plot. Indeed, the Triples come in rather late in the story, long after we have stopped caring about the annoying song they sing. If you want a decent animated movie, watch Perfect Blue; if you want something else, watch this. But if you do, go into it not thinking it is called The Triplets Of Belleville, for that is not what it is about. A more appropriate title might be "Annoying Older Lady Who Haunts Her Grandson." I wonder what that is in French.
For other foreign language films, please check out my reviews of:
Sin Nombre
Volver
Strawberry And Chocolate
3/10
For other movie reviews, please visit my Movie Reviews Index Page!
© 2012, 2004 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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