Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
When her grandson is kidnapped during the Tour de France, Madame Souza and her beloved pooch Bruno team up with the Belleville Sisters—an aged song-and-dance team from the days of Fred Astaire—to rescue him.
The Triplets of Belleville is a singular, deeply idiosyncratic work of animation — Sylvain Chomet's film is almost entirely wordless, communicating through exaggerated visual characterization, physical comedy, and a richly textured hand-drawn aesthetic that feels utterly unlike anything else in its era. The cinematography and visual design are exceptional: grotesquely caricatured figures, lush Franco-American atmosphere, and a jazzy, surreal energy make every frame distinctive. Novelty is near-unmatched — it perfects and personalizes a kind of silent-film absurdist tradition in a way no other animated film has. The plotting is deliberately thin and picaresque, functioning more as a vehicle for mood and visual gags than narrative drive, which limits its Plot score. 'Acting' in the conventional sense is replaced by voice-free performance and physical animation, which is charming but not dramatically deep. The ending is satisfying in a bittersweet, understated way but lacks real punch.