My Com­fort Blan­ket Movie: The Triplets of Belleville

There are some films you watch when you need a warm hug from a famil­iar source. There’s no new ter­rain to explore, no out­side world, no alarms and no sur­pris­es – they are sim­ply sooth­ing. Since a glob­al pan­dem­ic was declared on 11 March, dai­ly life has become so strange that the solace offered by com­fort blan­ket movies is enhanced. In this series, we want to cel­e­brate them, in what­ev­er form they take.

At the mushy-brained age of 10 years old, I had reached a dif­fi­cult junc­ture of my taste’s evo­lu­tion, hav­ing grown just dis­cern­ing enough to loathe most enter­tain­ment geared to kids and yet still a mite too dumb to con­tend with art for adults.

I need­ed some­thing that catered to my con­flict­ing needs, a movie that could enter­tain me on my terms (my phi­los­o­phy as a bud­ding crit­ic being that all movies should be come­dies with at least a few musi­cal num­bers) with­out a stoop­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty. At the time, I prob­a­bly flat­tered myself by think­ing that I want­ed movies for grown-ups, but hind­sight clar­i­fies that I actu­al­ly want­ed movies will­ing to treat young­sters like they don’t require spoonfeeding.

As a car­toon with an entire­ly unfa­mil­iar set of visu­al ref­er­ents, as an exem­plar of humor root­ed in drollery and Tatiesque sight gags, as a piece of a remote and for­eign past, every­thing about Syl­vain Chomet’s 2003 delight The Triplets of Belleville knocked my boy­hood self over. It’s the ide­al selec­tion to show to a bud­ding cinephile, both meet­ing them on their lev­el while broad­en­ing their hori­zons. I’ve cher­ished it as a life­long get­away to which I can return again and again, a reli­able bank of sim­ple and imme­di­ate plea­sures. Every sin­gle time, I tap back into the juve­nile thrill of dis­cov­ery, the elec­tri­fy­ing feel­ing that entire galax­ies of cin­e­ma are just com­ing into your view.

Friend­ly to curi­ous neo­phytes of all ages, The Triplets of Belleville serves as a fine primer to French cin­e­ma in its two-way transat­lantic car­i­ca­ture. Chomet puts the Gal­lic qual­i­ty in terms of how it gets per­ceived in Amer­i­ca, and like­wise, pokes fun at the cul­ture of the States by fil­ter­ing it through his own nation’s con­ge­nial stereotyping.

The pre­am­ble whisks us away to a New York music hall cir­ca the Roar­ing Twen­ties, where rotund women squeeze out of lim­ou­sines hold­ing their puny rich hus­bands like a clutch purse. (One par­tic­u­lar­ly plump dame has lost him between her but­tocks.) The Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, mean­while, grips a cheese­burg­er. Lat­er on, French cyclists are kept alive on an IV drip of red wine. In either case, there’s some­thing charm­ing­ly old-fash­ioned about these play­ful reduc­tions, due in no small part to the vin­tage-post­card ani­ma­tion style.

At the jump­ing joint men­tioned above, per­form­ing along­side the car­tooni­fied likes of Josephine Bak­er and Djan­go Rein­hardt, the sis­ter act lend­ing the film its title bewitch­es the crowd with a snap­py song-and-dance rou­tine. They’re the con­nec­tion from one obscure cor­ner of the past to the next, link­ing this whim­si­cal vision of Jazz Age deca­dence with the tract of the ​’60s that fills out the main story.

Chomet’s script leaps ahead to the mid­cen­tu­ry height of Tour de France fever, and joins the true heroes of our sto­ry: an indomitable, uneven-foot­ed old woman named Madame Souza, her bicy­cle-rid­ing grand­son Cham­pi­on, and their trusty pooch Bruno. She rais­es him for Tour great­ness from his ear­li­est years with jer­ry-rigged con­trap­tions in the home, but once he’s of age and ready for the big time, he falls into a nefar­i­ous scheme.

With Cham­pi­on kid­napped by a diminu­tive gang­ster and his rec­tan­gu­lar hench­men, Madame Souza, Bruno, and the aged Belleville girls set out to res­cue him and bust up the crim­i­nals’ oper­a­tion. With this adven­ture schemat­ic to keep his film fleet, Chomet indulges all of his idio­syn­crat­ic per­son­al whims, chief among them his fas­ci­na­tion with ana­log machinery.

His char­ac­ters see the cre­ative poten­tial in every­day objects and repur­pose them for their own use, such as in the sis­ters’ sig­na­ture tune. They back their own vocals up with instru­ments fash­ioned from junk – a refrig­er­a­tor rack plucked like a harp, a vac­u­um clean­er noz­zle turned wood­wind sub­sti­tute, and a news­pa­per ruf­fled for per­cus­sion. Madame Souza even­tu­al­ly comes to join the band, play­ing the spokes of a bicy­cle wheel as if it’s a xylo­phone. The clever pro­duc­tion num­bers cham­pi­on inge­nu­ity for its own sake, the thing that makes bor­ing every­day life fun.

That spir­it of unteth­ered imag­i­na­tion as a virtue on its own, a recur­ring theme in enter­tain­ment geared to the younger set, informs the whole of Chomet’s designs. Every­thing is a wink­ing ver­sion of itself, whether that means the steamships elon­gat­ed to resem­ble sky­scrap­ers or a tit­ter­ing lit­tle mechan­ic giv­en the teeth, ears, and over­all physique of a mouse. The film under­stands that the elas­tic­i­ty of real­i­ty is the thing that makes ani­ma­tion such a trans­portive form of enter­tain­ment, and Chomet chan­nels that sense of infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ty into an com­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty more arch than would be stan­dard for children’s cinema.

In a sim­ple, beau­ti­ful­ly absurd, alto­geth­er per­fect gag, Madame Souza makes it to Amer­i­ca by rent­ing a ped­al-boat on a French beach and slow­ly ambling her way across the Atlantic Ocean. In the kind of cheeky gag Chomet loves, a final but­ton post-cred­its returns to the boat rental hut to find the pro­pri­etor look­ing out over the water and accept­ing that Souza won’t be back with­in the allot­ted hour.

At a time when I’ve found no small quo­tient of com­fort by immers­ing my con­scious­ness in things stu­pid, unde­mand­ing, and sedat­ing – my rela­tion­ship to Net­flix Orig­i­nal Movies verges on the nar­cot­ic – The Triplets of Belleville has been a balm for bridg­ing the gap between sophis­ti­ca­tion and silli­ness. It in the Pla­ton­ic ide­al of a PG-13 ani­mat­ed fea­ture, not unpalat­able to the younger set nat­u­ral­ly grav­i­tat­ing to its hand-drawn aes­thet­ic, while wit­ty enough not to incur eye-rolls from parents.

My appre­ci­a­tion for the film has not increased or less­ened over time, only mor­phed as I notice more of the details or grasp more of the ref­er­ences. The film grows along with its view­er, from chal­leng­ing a kid’s inner adult to spark­ing an adult’s inner kid.