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The
Triplets of Belleville
Eric
Sieglestein
Fucked-up, tripped out and beautiful, The Triplets of Belleville
is about a little old lady with one leg shorter than the other
who gets her orphan grandson a bicycle. Years later, he's competing
in the Tour de France - where he is abducted by the French mafia
and taken across the sea to Belleville, a New York/Montreal
hybrid city of morbidly obese consumers. There, the grandson
is forced to compete in an underground bike-race/deathmatch.
Grandma must come to the rescue, aided by her trusty fat dog
Bruno and the Triplets, a 40's jazz trio now living in the Belleville
slums. |
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The animation is a mix of
your old-school cel drawing and CG, and it looks good - the
characters have these odd, exaggerated faces with really expressive
eyes. But what's really interesting is how the movie has practically
no dialogue at all - three, four spoken lines, tops. The whole
thing is purely visual, and it's fantastic.
The tone is set with the first scene, an old variety show featuring
the Triplets that Grandma watches on TV. It's something like
the little cartoons that play in Homer Simpson's brain, only
darker. Fred Astaire is eaten alive by his own shoes; that pretty
much sums it up. A whimsical nightmare. |
One of the best scenes has
Grandma taking a pedal-boat across the ocean, following the
gangsters' ship. The ocean looks amazing, and then the weather
turns stormy and it's even more fuckin' amazing. And then there's
the climactic car chase. This is the best car chase on film;
fuck The French Connection, fuck Smokey and the Bandit, double-fuck
The Matrix Reloaded: this is the best, never mind that it's
a cartoon. You've got your quick moves, gunshots, crashes, pileups,
explosions - and through it all, the grandson keeps pedaling
his bike with this spaced-out, stoned expression on his face
- not blank, on the contrary, it's extremely expressive; just
quiet.
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| The Triplets of Belleville is very funny
and surreal and crazy and beautiful, and I can't think of a
drug in the world I wouldn't want to see this movie on. Not
that you'd need to: the movie itself is like licking a toad
with your eyes. |
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The Triplets of Belleville:
Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
$13.49 @ Amazon.com
The Triplets of Belleville
DVD:
$17.47 @ Amazon.com
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