| |
July
14th, Bastille Day, earlier this week, celebrated the storming of
the prison in 1789 by French revolutionaries and has come to
symbolize the French values of Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité.
The Tour de France, that ineffably Gallic tradition that some
have called the most grueling sports event in the world, also
continues this month (but of course, it is far more than a Gallic tradition
-- in France it's no mere race, c'est la guerre! -- that
has been dominated by the American Lance Armstrong who is
attempting a remarkable 8th win this year). So while the peloton
snakes around France, there is no more appropriate film to watch than the wonderfully fun and whackily sophisticated 2003
animated film
Les
Triplettes de Belleville
-- created by Sylvain Chomet and that
delights in all things French.
When
her cyclist son Champion is kidnapped by gangsters during the Tour
de France -- an absurd premise to begin with -- the elderly Madame
Souza enlists the help of her fat dog Bruno and the Triplette
sisters, old crones in cloches who once sang in Belleville music
halls. Chomet spares no one with his farcical touch and the
film includes some good-natured ribbing at the expense of American
culture -- his fictional Belleville, a surreal version of
1930's-19450's Manhattan, is inhabited by ogre-like creatures who
consume hamburgers with unrestrained relish. Chomet displays
a loving nostalgia for French national obsessions -- music-hall
songs, cycling, food -- and his aesthetic style is
uniquely idiosyncratic. The New York Times said of
the film:
"Mr.
Chomet's is a universe of sheer impossibility, where size,
proportion and balance are ruled by the whims of his perverse pen
and peculiar imagination."
It
is Chomet's own surreal, stylized world, there are no strangely androgynous humans dashing about as in
Japanese animé or cutesy woodland creatures à la Walt
Disney. Chomet's somewhat absurd pastiche sometimes skims but never
descends into the truly grotesque. And much of the film's
delight lies in the many astute
aesthetic references to everything from Jacques Tati films to
Citroën cars, as well as parodies of Charles De Gaulle and
Josephine Baker.
The
film has virtually no dialogue, but the deliriously silly central
song, Belleville Rendezvous, will leave you smiling long
after the film is over….
See:
Les
Triplettes de Belleville
Permalink
Save
to del.icio.us
Digg
This!
|
|
Lance
Armstrong after his 7th Tour de France win
|
