I'm prejudiced against French cinema. Or I should say, I don't like Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Am I stereotyping? Absolutely. It's what I do with movies. Makes things more entertaining.
While I'm always hesitant to watch French movies, I also love non-Japanese animation. (Japanese animation is a whole other issue.) The format allows for unbridled imagination. Filmmakers can get away with things that can't work with live action. (Which is part of the reason I dislike Jeunet. He's doing cartoon things in live action, which annoys me. Don't ask for the logic behind that.)
The Triplets of Belleville takes full advantage of the medium. It's essentially a silent picture with a soundtrack. The main characters only have two lines, said at the beginning and repeated at the end. In between, we only hear singing and radio/tv news broadcasts. And a whistle. Since there's no dialog, we must infer the back story and relationships through visual evidence.
The movie follows an older woman and her grandson, who's parents died tragically. The early days of their relationship are morose. The boy's lost and sad in an unfamiliar environment. The woman tries to connect with the boy, first through music, then with a puppy, then a train set, until she finally finds what he's really interested in, biking. The boy grows into a bicyclist competing in the Tour de France while his grandmother trains him. During the race, kidnappers take the boy and a few other participants for nefarious purpose. His grandmother, with the help of the dog, tracks the kidnappers and her grandson to the city of Belleville. Once there, they lose the trail. Penniless, the grandmother and dog meet the Triplets of Belleville, a musical act introduced in the opening scene, now aged. With the help of the Triplets, the grandmother will rescue her grandson.
It took me a while to realize there are no subtitles on purpose. There's some English dialog, and a bunch of French, but it's mostly inconsequential to the story. The lack of dialog forced me to pay attention and watch. Writing action without dialog is a screenwriting exercise, but I never thought it could be this effective. It works well here because of the medium. Animation allows for infinite variation in body types and facial expressions, making it easier for story to be conveyed visually.
I see some similarities between Triplets and the work of Jeunet. My problem between the two is the medium. When I walk into an animated movie, I can disconnect from reality further than I can with live action. If it's a live action movie set in the modern world, I expect a great deal of reality, or at the minimum some explanation of the different physical rules of the world. It's also just fun to hate on French cinema, an opinion formed by The Critic: "I love French films, pretentious boring French films!".
The Triplets of Belleville is not boring. It's quirky, funny, and entertaining. Also short. I like short.
First Viewing: 3+2+2+2+3 = 12