The Triplets of Belleville

This animated feature by Sylvain Chomet was seriously weird. The visuals were like no other movie I've seen and even now, weeks after I've seen it they still haunt my imagination. In structure the story is quite conventional – Madame Souza trains up her geeky grandson to be a top-line cyclist (a very French ambition) but while he is competing in the Tour de France he is abducted by criminals who remove him to `Belleville' on the other side of the Atlantic. M. Souza goes to find him and after many adventures…well, you know the rest. There's plenty of chasing about on Belleville's streets and freeways in very French looking vehicles that look like stretch limo versions of the immortal Citroen 2CV. Belleville itself is a curious amalgam of New York, Montreal and Paris, and seems to owe something to Fritz Lang's `Metropolis'.

The eponymous triplets are three former 30s singing stars now reduced to playing in cheap cafes, busking and eating frog's legs, of which Belleville seems to have an ample supply. They take M de Souza in and help her in her quest without any great benefit to themselves.

I did think it might help to appreciate this movie if you were French. There is virtually no dialogue (though plenty of singing) but there seem to be numerous references presumably satirical to various French national obsessions and preoccupations. What is the joke is not always clear to an outsider. Is there any significance in M Souza's originally being Portuguese? (She actually bears a close resemblance to the English cartoonist Giles's Grandma). Are top cyclist just nervy greyhounds with huge leg muscles? Do the French see themselves as svelte and Americans as all grossly obese? Are the French self-conscious about being typecast as frog-eaters? Are Citroen really planning a stretch limo version of the 2CV? I don't know, but then I don't need to.

Definitely different.