Review: The Triplets of Belleville
Dec. 2nd, 2004 03:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jeriendhalGenre: Animated Thriller
Origin: French-Canadian
This movie is Grotesque.
That isn't to say it's a bad movie, or nessasarily horrifying (though there are plenty of squickable moments), it's just that the characters in it, all human (save for one fat dog) are extreme charicatures, and could probably appear as background aliens in Lilo & Stitch if you just changed their skin color.
Anyway the basic plot, such as it is, concerns the efforts of a club footed mother trying to rescue her son, a champion Tour-de-France bicyclist, who has been kidnapped by the French Mafia. With only her faithful (and fat) pooch, and a set of elderly female jazz singers at her side, will she be able to effect a rescue in time?
That simple summary doesn't cover the bizzarro esthetic of Triplets. Like jazz, there's a certain whimsical, improvisiation to the mother's efforts, which run headlong against the Mafia's careful, controlled plans. The film follows a relatively straight line narratively, but it indulges itself in diversions along the way that make the whole.
Champion, the bicyclist, is a sort of uber-bike rider that would probably make Lance Armstrong switch to a tricycle. He looks like a humanized Greyhound dog, and has basically no existence beyond a driving need to make his pedals rotate (his fellow kidnapped cyclists are even worse, their tongues hanging out and panting like dogs that are stuck out in the sun during the summer).
The titular Triplets are introduced in a wierd little homage to the old black & white Merrie Melodies, singing on stage while a topless Josephine Baker look alike dances, followed by Fred Astaire who tap dances so well his shoes come to life and eat his legs. There's a five minute sequence that involves nothing but the dog, Bruno, laboriously climbing up the stairs of the house he lives in so he can bark madly at a passing train, then climbing back down. The Mafia goons are so uttterly angular that when that when stand together they look the Monolith from 2001 with heads and legs (and very big guns).
There just a so much wierd stuff in the film it's hard to describe, and you just have to roll with it. Bits of the movie I could have done without (when the Triplets rescue the mother and take her to their apartment, the phrase "sh*thole" should be taken literally), but overall it draws you with just the sheer joyous detail of the animation. It's not for everyone, it's not something you want to see for the snappy dialog (the film is nearly silent, save for sound effects and music), but it is worth checking out at least.
Origin: French-Canadian
This movie is Grotesque.
That isn't to say it's a bad movie, or nessasarily horrifying (though there are plenty of squickable moments), it's just that the characters in it, all human (save for one fat dog) are extreme charicatures, and could probably appear as background aliens in Lilo & Stitch if you just changed their skin color.
Anyway the basic plot, such as it is, concerns the efforts of a club footed mother trying to rescue her son, a champion Tour-de-France bicyclist, who has been kidnapped by the French Mafia. With only her faithful (and fat) pooch, and a set of elderly female jazz singers at her side, will she be able to effect a rescue in time?
That simple summary doesn't cover the bizzarro esthetic of Triplets. Like jazz, there's a certain whimsical, improvisiation to the mother's efforts, which run headlong against the Mafia's careful, controlled plans. The film follows a relatively straight line narratively, but it indulges itself in diversions along the way that make the whole.
Champion, the bicyclist, is a sort of uber-bike rider that would probably make Lance Armstrong switch to a tricycle. He looks like a humanized Greyhound dog, and has basically no existence beyond a driving need to make his pedals rotate (his fellow kidnapped cyclists are even worse, their tongues hanging out and panting like dogs that are stuck out in the sun during the summer).
The titular Triplets are introduced in a wierd little homage to the old black & white Merrie Melodies, singing on stage while a topless Josephine Baker look alike dances, followed by Fred Astaire who tap dances so well his shoes come to life and eat his legs. There's a five minute sequence that involves nothing but the dog, Bruno, laboriously climbing up the stairs of the house he lives in so he can bark madly at a passing train, then climbing back down. The Mafia goons are so uttterly angular that when that when stand together they look the Monolith from 2001 with heads and legs (and very big guns).
There just a so much wierd stuff in the film it's hard to describe, and you just have to roll with it. Bits of the movie I could have done without (when the Triplets rescue the mother and take her to their apartment, the phrase "sh*thole" should be taken literally), but overall it draws you with just the sheer joyous detail of the animation. It's not for everyone, it's not something you want to see for the snappy dialog (the film is nearly silent, save for sound effects and music), but it is worth checking out at least.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-02 10:35 pm (UTC)Grotesque, though, is a good descriptor. The fascination with the bizarre details (the Triplettes' froggy buffet, the dog's monotonous daily routine) provides a bit of gritty realism to ground the otherwise bizarre stuff that happens. By the time Grandma pedals doggedly across the bloody ocean in search of poor Champion, you are willing to believe that she wasn't going to let a little thing like a few thousand miles alone in the ocean get in her way.
I noticed too that the depiction of Belleville is pretty much a blatant attack on western consumerism -- in which only money (and food, and more of everything than you need) really matters and if you don't have it, you're screwed, and in which nobody seems to do anything *real*, to the point where they have to kidnap *real* athletes to watch. The Tripletts are real artists, making real cool music, even in their decrepitude -- clearly they're popular, but they live in squalor and survive on a diet of blasted (though admittedly fresh) frogs. Yet they're willing to share with a homeless refugee, even help her find her boy and risk life and limb to rescue him. CHampion himself has allowed his pursuit to become his life, just as Grandma brings a single-minded dedication to caring for him. For Champion, cycling is his art form, something he does because he must, and it literally shapes his being; for Grandma, caring for Champion is her art. They've achieved a strange mix of contented survival and don't need the things that Belleville offers. And I think all the Tripletts want is an appreciative audience (and a bit of protein). And Bruno just wants to have a train to bark at (loved his doggy dream, didn't you?) and the people he knows nearby. ANy other inconveniences or disappointments can be dealt with as long as everyone's okay. Though a good hamburger would be nice every now and then. :)
They're all characters you can feel you know, even if they're grotesquely represented.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-05 09:35 pm (UTC)