In one of life's peculiar little coincidences, my first viewing of
The Triplets of Belleville was interrupted at an important structural
point, right as the story moves from France to North America. The fire
alarm in my building starting blaring for no good reason, as it does
about twice a year, and couldn't be shut off for a few hours. Having
to return to the film a couple of days later was actually rather
enlightening, since it emphasized how different the two halves of the
movie are. Although my wife and I had been greatly enjoying the film
up to the change in setting, neither of us cared much for the last act
at all. Perhaps this isn't fair, and a straight viewing through might
have left a different impression, but I can't help feeling that what
had started as a delightfully eccentric cinematic vision became, in
the end, more strange than actually enjoyable.
An exceedingly
odd animated feature, The Triplets of Belleville is a French-Canadian-
Belgian co-production created by animator Sylvain Chomet. If you
really boil it down, the plot is basically similar to that in Finding
Nemo, in which a parent must cross the ocean to rescue a kidnapped
child, but the comparison is superficial at most. When a little old
French lady's grown grandson is kidnapped right off his bicycle while
racing in the Tour de France, the very tiny woman and her extremely
fat dog chase the abductors to an ocean liner and then rent a
paddleboat to pursue them across the Atlantic. Arriving in the
metropolis of Belleville, Madame Souza teams up with a trio of elderly
dance-hall singers to track down her boy, discover the bizarre
conspiracy to snatch cyclists for personal entertainment, and rescue
him from the clutches of an organized crime ring. Chomet has a
fantastical and surreal style that is more or less the animated
equivalent of a film by Jeunet and Caro (Delicatessen, City of Lost
Children). He embraces animation as its own medium and makes no
Disney-fied attempt to depict realism in any manner. His characters
are all exaggerated, gangly and distorted caricatures of the human
form. Over-the-top stereotypes abound, with obese and obnoxious
Americans on the one hand and snooty frog-eating French on the other.
The city of Belleville is a mish-mash of elements from New York, Paris
and Montreal, in which buildings shaped like wine bottles dot the
skyline. The film has almost no dialogue at all, relying instead on
quirky slapstick humor and layered visual gags to tell its story.
Pesky requirements like narrative logic take a backseat priority to
simply basking in the outrageous images and fun, jazzy music.
For a while, the movie really works. All the details of the boy's
childhood, his preparations for the Tour de France, and the Rube
Goldberg chain of events that lead to his capture are fascinating in
their warped logic. Madame Souza and her dog Bruno are endearing
characters, and the Triplets of the title are charmingly eccentric.
The movie also has some wonderful imagery (the oceanic paddleboat trip
being a highlight) and very witty humor. Where it lost me was when it
settled into its caper plot, which becomes more disjointed and
illogical (even by the movie's own twisted internal logic) as it
progresses. There are a few uncomfortably violent scenes that seem out
of place, and the movie climaxes with what is perhaps (whether
intentionally or not) the dumbest chase scene in the history of
cinema. 
Even with a brisk 81-minute running time, the picture
feels like a clever short film that has been unnecessarily padded out
to feature length. On the other hand, it is barely long enough to wear
out its welcome too badly. Its breezy humor and snappy musical numbers
are quite entertaining. Although not perfect, the movie is just too
original (being similar to neither American animation nor Japanese
anime in its style) to ignore or forget.
Video: How Does
The Disc Look?
Depending on what part of the world you saw
it in, the movie's theatrical aspect ratio would have been either
1.66:1 or 1.85:1. I'm not sure which of the two the artwork was
actually drawn and animated for (likely 1.66:1). The DVD splits the
difference and presents the movie in a modified 1.78:1 transfer, which
conveniently fills a widescreen TV with no black bars. It does not
visibly appear to be missing any important picture information, and
the composition is fairly satisfying.
The disc seems to have
been mastered from source elements prepared originally for the UK, as
all of the credits are in English and the movie carries the British
release title, "Belleville Rendez-Vous", which the player-
generated subtitles promptly mistranslate as "The Triplets of
Belleville." I guess Americans aren't expected to know what such
an obscure word as "rendezvous" means. Since they were going
to subtitle the opening title credit anyway, and since the translation
more accurately reflects the movie's real title, "Les Triplettes
de Belleville," Columbia TriStar may as well have just used the
original French credits in the first place. No matter, ce n'est pas
grave. 
The anamorphically-enhanced picture is reasonably sharp
and detailed. It isn't razor sharp like the best CGI animation
digital-to-digital transfers, but it doesn't seem lacking either. The
end credits are rather blurry, though. Thankfully, there is very
little edge enhancement ringing to distract. Colors are crisply
defined, clean and noiseless. For the most part, this is a nice
transfer indeed.
Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?
The film's original language being French, one might be annoyed
that the DVD's only credited audio options are English and Spanish
Dolby Digital 5.1 dub tracks. However, when you see the movie you'll
realize that there is next to no speaking in it. Defaulting to the
English track, almost all of the incidental dialogue heard in the
background of scenes (a radio announcer's voice, the grumblings of
passers-by) remains in its original French without translation. Clips
of these scenes appear in the supplemental features with subtitles for
some of this speaking, but (aside from the opening title credit) the
DVD offers no subtitle options at all. There is a closed captioning
track, oddly, which translates primarily just the sound effects.
Fortunately, the movie works just fine without any translation, and
not knowing the language may even enhance by the alien-ness of it all.
The English or Spanish dubbing only comes into play for about 3 spoken
lines, none of which are terribly important or distracting. Still, was
it really too much to ask for TriStar to put a French track on there
instead of one of the others? 
Language aside, the Dolby Digital
5.1 mix is strong and engaging. The surround channels aren't
aggressively active, but when they are used the effects are extremely
directional. Although there is very little audio bleed to the rear
soundstage, sounds directed there are placed for specific purpose. The
track is clean and well-recorded, with sharp sound effects and a
moderate amount of bass. The music also has a nice fullness to it.
Supplements: What Goodies Are There?
DVD viewers in
Europe got an elaborate special edition of the film, but Americans
will have to settle for the small selection of bonus features that
have been ported over. 
If you thought the movie was strange, the
live-action music video (styled like a very surreal
silent film) is at least a dozen times odder and more inexplicable. I
would have also liked to see a clip from the Academy Awards
performance of the song, which was terrific, but this was not to be.
Director Sylvain Chomet speaks in French with English subtitles for
a selected-scenes audio commentary. Three scenes in
all are featured. The disc also offers two featurettes. The
Making of The Triplets of Belleville runs 16 minutes and is
stretched to an odd aspect ratio neither 4:3 nor 16:9 (it appears to
have been incorrectly converted from PAL). This is a very interesting
piece, not your usual promotional fluff. An extension of this is the
5-minute The Cartoon According to Sylvain Chomet,
which shows how he draws and creates characters.
The disc wraps up
with a theatrical trailer. TriStar's DVD annoyingly
plays the movie's theme song over all of the menus in an endless loop.
DVD-ROM Exclusives: What do you get when you pop the disc in
your PC?
There are no ROM extras on the disc.
Parting Thoughts
The Triplets of Belleville is such
an imaginative and unique cinematic experience that it certainly
deserves at least one viewing. Some audiences will be more enraptured
with it that others, but even though I found the last half of the
movie disappointingly uneven I foresee myself returning to the film to
soak it all up again. Columbia TriStar's DVD is a mixed bag. Although
the video transfer and sound are nice, the movie's aspect ratio has
been altered (albeit perhaps insignificantly) and the studio didn't
bother to provide the original French audio track. The bonus features
are also slim compared to foreign releases.
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