Belleville Rendez-Vous Movie Review:


After years of dreaming and training, Champion was at last racing in the Tour De France. With the support of his doting grandmother, Mme Souza and his faithful dog Bruno he was pushing himself to the extremes needed to win the world’s toughest cycle race. The Mafia had other ideas though as they set out to kidnap three riders and use them in a nefarious scheme in Belleville. So it is up to Mme Souza and Bruno to get to Belleville and rescue Champion before it is too late.

Visually stunning but extremely weird, Belleville Rendez-vous shows that 2D animation can still be extremely inventive.

Director Sylvain Chomet surrealist view of French and American life is a visual treat that combines great set pieces with a bizarre story line and hardly any dialogue. There are only about four lines and a song in the whole movie, the rest of the film is driven by the character’s reactions to situations and their facial expressions.

The characters are suitably surreal. Champion and the rest of the cyclists have huge leg muscles and extremely skinny upper torsos and arms. Our heroine Mme Souza has huge, thick glasses and a clubfoot but she has an unsurpassed determination to rescue her grandson that you can really get behind. Bruno is an excessively fat dog who hates trains to the point that he has nightmares about them. Mme Souza American friends, an ex music hall trio who have an obsession with eating frogs, using hand grenades and making music with the most unusual instruments are three of the most bizarre creations to come out of Chomet’s slightly twisted imagination.

The whole look of the film is splattered with surrealist touches. Differences are emphasises in the extreme. Belleville itself is a view of an American metropolis, with all the inhabitants been extremely obese and even the Statue of Liberty holds a Hamburger, not a torch. The French don’t escape either with frog’s legs and cycling obsessions abound.

This is animation at its most bizarre but that is what makes it so interesting. With studios such as DreamWorks and Disney struggling to stoke up any interest in their 2D animated films, it is left to the more inventive and creative animators is inject in life into what is considered to be a dying art. Belleville Rendez-vous won’t be a commercial smash or a movie that you can merchandise to the kids but it has more invention and creativity than any major studio has managed to produce in 2D for many years.

Star Rating = * * *

Jamie Kelwick

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