Director – Sylvain Chomet – 2003 – France – Cert. 12a – 80m
*****
Hailing from France, this animated fable is a heady concoction of nightclub singers, long distance cyclists, doting matriarchs and ruthless mobsters – out in UK cinemas from Friday, August 23rd, 2003
Like the animator’s earlier short The Old Lady And The Pigeons (1996), Sylvain Chomet’s animated fable is a highly personal work driven by intense character study.
Champion is a small boy obsessed by bicycles, put through a rigorous training programme by grandmother Madame Souza (voice: Monica Viegas) and entered years later (voice as an adult: Michel Robin) in the Tour de France. When during the race he and some fellow competitors are kidnapped by gangsters, the trail leads granny and faithful hound Bruno to Belleville, where aging chanteuses Les Triplets De Belleville agree to help them rescue Champion.
It isn’t so much the plot that makes this great as the detail large and small that Chomet hangs upon it. From its opening, joyous, Fleischeresque jazz number through slow, overcast grey sequences where railway trains roar past the upper floor of the family house to the unexpected car chase finale with broad-shouldered gunmen in unbelievably long cars, the little touches grab the attention and never let go.
Francophile origins are shrewdly served by a screenplay almost totally lacking in dialogue where, as in Jacques Tati’s recently restored M.Hulot’s Holiday (1953) and Playtime (1967), character is defined by gesture and action. Working in 2D animation, Chomet extends this principle further by constructing environments – the small town where Champion grows and trains, the winding, mountainous Tour de France routes, the Big Apple-inspired metropolis of Belleville itself – which likewise function as characters. The result is unlike most animation seen in cinemas and makes for highly rewarding viewing.
Belleville Rendez-vous is out in UK cinemas from Friday, August 23rd, 2003.
This review is of the French version with English subtitles, as per UK release. There is also an English language dub.
Originally published in What’s On in London, 2003.
Trailer: