LES TRIPLETTES DE BELLEVILLE / THE TRIPLETS OF BELLEVILLE

France, 2002, 78 minutes, Colour.
Direected by Sylvain Chomet.

What a pity Finding Nemo was so good! If not, The Triplettes from Belleville would have won the 2003 Oscar for Best Animated Feature. (It was also nominated in the Best Song category.) It is a hoot of a film - and intriguing as well.

The animation is broad and vivid, recreating France and somewhere in North America in bold drawings and colours. Champion is a little boy who lives with his mother - and loves bicycles. When he grows up, she encourages him to enter the Tour de France. But danger lurks and Champion is abducted and shipped to Belleville where the Mafiosi have set up a theatre to run their own cycling races so that they can bet on them. His mother and pet dog follow in a pedal-boat.

It's the triplets themselves who are intriguing. Old women, drawn with great panache and detail, who used to be vaudeville singers, they befriend Champion's mother and set about a rescue mission. We realise just how much we care about poor Champion.

That's the plot. But it is the design, the drawing, the colour that are fascinating. And it is the music, a vigorous and rhythmic beating score, that keeps pumping with energy.

1. Interesting and enjoyable? Different?

2. The awards, the Oscar nominations?

3. The style of animation, layouts, atmosphere according to the decades, the delineation of characters, caricatures? The grotesque and the funny? Arrival of the fat women and the men for the cabaret? The action sequences, especially the bike riding? The musical score?

4. The opening, the 1930s, the tinted colour, the performances, the triplets and their singing, Rendezvous Belleville, their appearances, movement, voices? The supporting acts? The Josephine Baker style, the bananas, the reaction of the men, hurrying from the stage? The Fred Astaire dancer – and being consumed by his shoes? The band?

5. The transition to the mother with her son, the dog? Watching television? The 1940s? Trying to get the boy interested? Music, sitting in his room? His mother looking at the photos, the bike, his becoming interested and active?

6. Television, the speech by De Gaulle, the atmosphere France, the 1940s?

7. The adult son, his appearance, riding, his mother and the whistle, the dog? His strenuous exercise, returning home, his mother and the massage, his muscles, weariness? Eating, the food for the dog?

8. The race, the tour de France, his mother and support? The progress of the race?

9. The criminal gang, the square shouldered man, his appearance, interventions, on the mountain, the abduction of the son? His being imprisoned with the other riders, scrawny and alone?

10. The mother, the truck, the different trucks, her being deceived? Her attempts to search for her son?

11. The appearance of the triplets? Older? Singing? The music?

12. The activities, the confrontations, the excitement, success?

13. The film as a French animation classic?