THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE (ODEON FILMS, 2003)

By Rick Jackson

Written and directed by Sylvain Chomet, The Triplets of Belleville is a marvelous delight from beginning to end. It's retro look has a stunning similarity to Max Fleischer's Betty Boop cartoons which were popular from the late 1920s to 1935 until the Hays Code deemed them immoral.

What immediately draws your attention is the jazz music score. Canadian composer Benoit Charest employed the accordion for the boulevard sequences, while others featured music reminiscent of the late French chanteuse Edith Piaf.

"Belleville Rendez-Vous" is the highlight of the film, and it is performed three times in three different versions. It uses the same rhythm of Django Rhinehardt. The three music hall singers sound like the Andrews Sisters, but it is actually sung by Beatrice Bonifassi whose Attila Marcel is a Piaf clone, Lina Boudreault, and Marie-Lou Gauthier.

Another favourite is "Cabaret D'Ouverture" which has the same dubbed jungle drums and lush melodies and riffs of early Duke Ellington. You'll love the rigourous syncopation, hot trumpet and whomping tuba similar to the Dixieland music of New Orleans.

When you add the campy opera, early rock and other musical incarnations, it's a blending of traditions that make the score a heady mix for the 21st century. After you've adjusted your ears, you are in for a real treat as you watch this bizarre and twisted cartoon take you on an unforgettable journey through its characters drawn in the graphic imagination of Chomet. The kidnap and rescue of a beak-nosed cyclist from the Tour de France was loosely inspired by the real-life kidnapping by Cubist Mafiosi.

The charactres are drawn with such hyperbole and untraditional animation, you are thrown into a subculture far removed from today's computer generated features which pale in comparison.

The Triplets of Belleville features what may be the year's most exciting chase on the big screen this year when grandmother Madame Souza is hot pursuit with her named Bruno. Each sequence is edited so carefully together, it's like your right there with every cliff hanging moment after another. You'll laugh, cheer and, in the end, be thrilled by it all.

It is rated G/General which means everyone can see it.

February 28, 2004

Copyright 2004 Rick Jackson