The Triplets of Belleville (2003)

This is a bizarre movie. I mean that in a good way. I usually don't like it when people describe a film as "weird," because that's usually a way of copping out of thinking critically about an interesting work or expressing resistance to originality. But The Triplets of Belleville is weird.

That's not all it is, though. It's not enough to say that. It is both childlike and grotesque. It's funny and disturbing. It's sort of a messed-up fairy tale, I guess. It's certainly unlike anything I've ever seen, and I think maybe it defies description.

This is an animated film, in case you didn't know. The setting is France, at least at the beginning. Halfway through, the action moves to a place called Belleville, which looks to me like a French estimation of an American city (everyone is fat and the mafia are in control). It centers around a grandmother raising her grandson. She buys him a bicycle when he is very young, and by the time of his young adulthood, he is competing in (and winning) the Tour de France. That is, until he, and two other cyclists, are kidnapped by gangsters and taken to Belleville. The grandmother and the family dog set out to find the grandson, and are aided in their search by the famous triplets of Belleville, who were singers back in what looks like the 1920's. So they're pretty old now.

What I've just written is the plot of this film told in a straightforward, realistic way. That is not, however, how Sylvain Chomet, the writer and director, tells the story. In fact, I would say The Triplets of Belleville is much less about plot than it is about imaginative animation. Chomet makes this approach work very well.

Here are just a few of the things that happen in this movie: the dog dreams about riding a train around the top of his food bowl. The grandmother vacuums the grandson's knees and thighs. Mafia bodyguards lock their shoulders together to create a blockish, formidable mass. Men wear t-shirts that read "I love fat." The triplets eat nothing but frogs, and hunt for them in the river using dynamite. A car tips backwards while driving up a hill and continues to flip down the hill like a Slinky.

Even as I am describing this, I know I am not doing it effectively enough. I know it's a cliche, but this really must be seen to be believed. I'm not sure I have ever seen animation so imaginative and creative and disturbing all at once, except maybe WALL-E or Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But this is a different type of film entirely.

Oh, I forgot to mention that The Triplets of Belleville is completely free of dialogue. And it held my attention. Even silent films have titles in between shots. Just saying.

I think this is a movie everybody should see. I don't know that I'm completely jumping up and down about it, but if you are looking for something completely original (which you should be), this is it.