8 September 2003
Rain pours down outside a small, tall house next to a railway bridge. Inside the dining room a dog lies on the floor, whining. It’s hungry, but so is its master, and he’s still eating. The man’s grandmother is fixing a bicycle wheel with the help of a trinket and a tuning fork.
There are sounds, but not relaxing sounds, and all echoing from the stone floor. There’s the ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway, the tuning of the bicycle wheel, the dog’s pitiful yelps at his master, and the clinking of his master’s cutlery. Nothing is happening. No one is speaking.
You are trapped. Trapped watching an art-house film. No, trapped watching an art-house animation. And it’s French. And the characters look strange and unlikable — grotesques, almost. And there’s barely any dialogue, just snippets of French and English.
Skip forward an hour. You’re puzzled, but pleased, having just witnessed one of the great chase sequences of all time. The film wasn’t that bad; in fact, technically it was excellent. Although you never actually laugh out loud, you did spend a lot of time silently laughing. You’d like to see it again, knowing what to expect and who the characters are.
What was that film? It was Les Triplettes de Belleville (Belleville Rendez-vous in the UK; inexplicably they’ve changed from a title in French that was appropriate, to a title in French that was also appropriate). It’s very French, and that’s mostly good.
The plot doesn’t really matter, but here it is anyway: boy is sad. Grandmother gives boy dog. Boy is sad. Grandmother gives boy bicycle. Boy is happy. Boy takes part in the Tour de France. Boy gets kidnapped. Grandmother sets off to save him. Running gags include the dog barking at trains and the grandmother’s whistle.
Almost everything is wilfully bizarre, from the opening sequence to the final image of Champion (the boy and the dog’s master) watching television. The visual style isn’t instantly likable, but there are so many strokes of genius in the design — the merging mafia men and their Godfather; the ungainly, stooped cyclists; the solution to a flat tyre; the Triplettes hunting frogs — that it’s impossible not be impressed, even if you’re not engaged.
As implied earlier, you need to give a little. But if you do, you’ll get an awful lot back.