I just got back from seeing Triplets of Belleville -- at last! it finally opened in this area on Feb 13, and I went to the very first showing -- and it was great, great, great! I love, love, love this movie! My companion du jour asked me on the way back to my house if it had met my expectations, and I told him it had well exceeded them. (If I had liked it any more they would have had to hose me off the ceiling.) I asked whether he had liked it. "Yes," he said, a man given to thoughtful judgement dryly understated, "it succeeded on many levels."
Triplets of Belleville is, I'm happy to say, indescribable. And that to me is one of the tests of great (non-verbal) art. You can break wave after wave of words on it, but it remains, like the stone breakwater, unaffected by comment. The most you can hope to do is describe it so that people will want to go and see it -- possibly several times.
My cinema companion agreed. He said, in a followup email: "I too enjoyed the Triplets. It's one of those films that doesn't fit comfortably into any existing pigeonhole. I suppose I must either create for it a new pigeonhole or else declare it to be beyond classification. It was unique and quite surprising on several levels. I appreciate your great suggestion."
It's unique, surprising. Josephine Baker, Fred Astaire, and Django Rinehart all make cameo appearances in it -- in animated form; it is an animated feature-length film. But they, and the idea of referencing stars of the time, are quickly passed, part of setting up the chronology of the story. The film's original characters are finely and wryly observed, and brought to us in the way only true animation can -- by showing us their characteristics in exaggerated and satiric appearance and actions and in embodied form. There is the unforgettable Maitre d' who literally bends over backwards to satisfy and please his powerful client, the head of the French Mafia with his bodyguards. The bodyguard thugs are drawn with huge high and wide shoulders, looking like blocks of black stone, all interchangeably identical. And the apparent weight turns into an actual weight hazard later on. The unbearably smug and self-satisfied look on the face of the leader in the Tour de France bicycle race; the racers themsrelves, all huge leg muscles and barely-there bodies; the dreams of Bruno the dog, that we see in black and white; and so much more, make this a unique experience. And the great story that pits Mme. Souza and the Triplets -- ladies of an advanced age, all -- and the faithful dog Bruno against the entire French Mafia, to free Mme. Souza's kidnapped grandson, Champion... wonderful. The film has the power to make us laugh, to create suspense, to despair at setbacks and rejoice at victories, and even to cause us to shed a tear.
Beyond all this, however, the artwork in the film is what got me interested from the beginning. Not only the expressively animated characters and objects (like the ocean liners and the bicycles, cars, trucks, etc.) but, even more, the backgrounds and scenes of the entire film are masterworks of expressive drawing. They are filled with character, anecdotal but plausible in style, filled with vertiginous hills, winding roads, hugely high bridges, setting us firmly in the world of the story, a world seen with a gimlet eye for observation, detail, and comment.
I told you it was indescribable. You'll just have to go out and see it for yourself. Please.|
6:58:41 AM 
|
|
