A hand-drawn delight

While Walt Disney and Dreamworks move further into the arena of computer graphics and digitisation for their animated features, traditionalists lament the paucity of pure illustration in feature-length cartoons.

Their fears will be momentarily assuaged by Sylvain Chomet’s extraordinary animated movie, which brings to life the European graphic artistry found in the bandes dessinèes and sophisticated graphic novels yet to become commonplace in Britain.

Chomet’s unique film has roots in the surrealist traditions of Spain, Belgium and France, as well as flashes of early Americana, such as Betty Boop, and is, in short, quite staggeringly brilliant.

The story — told almost entirely without dialogue — centres on the relationship between a diminutive, club-footed Gallic grandmother, Madame Souza, and her forlornly orphaned grandson, Champion. When she discovers his secret love of bicycling she sets about training him for the Tour de France.

Years later, and with the added companionship of his faithful dog Bruno, Champion enters the race, only to be kidnapped by mysterious hoodlums and taken across the Atlantic to the metropolis of Belleville.

Undeterred by the journey, Madame Souza and Bruno follow the ship in a pedalo and set about tracking down the villains to rescue Champion. They are aided in their undertaking by an eccentric music-hall trio, the Belleville Triplets, whose diet consists entirely of frogs prepared in an infinite variety of ways.

The depth of human emotion threading the vivid and benignly grotesque movie turns what might have merely been a mildly engaging 80 minutes into an indisputable animated classic.

Lacking dialogue, feelings and relationships are expressed graphically, by the shape and movements of the characters.

Even within its hallucinatory dreamscape, there is a surreal logic at work. Madame Souza’s energetic jaunt across the Atlantic may seem unlikely, but she has already spent years cycling behind Champion as she trained him up.

Visually, it is breathtaking and hilariously funny, often at the same time. Belleville is peopled by grotesquely obese citizens who waddle slowly along the sidewalks. The Triplets’ method of catching frogs involves a stick grenade and a net.

Even the musical interludes (Fred Astaire, Josephine Baker and Django Reinhardt all appear in the opening sequence) are delivered with a vivacity and respect for form that draws on the past while forging something new in the most unexpected manner.

Belleville Rendez-Vous
Cert: 12A

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