In anticipation of the release, on 20th August 2010, of Sylvain Chomet’s new full length animated feature The Illusionist (L’Illusioniste), we are taking a backward glance at the director’s magical film debut Belleville Rendez-Vous.

Belleville Rendez-Vous (originally The Triplets of Belleville) concerns Champion, a orphan boy raised in sepia tinted poverty by his quietly devoted grandmother Madame Souza. He develops a passion for cycling which, with the support of grandma, carries him out of his lonely, gloomy funk and all the way up to the mountain stages of the Tour de France. His dream realised, things take an unlikely and sinister turn as Champion is kidnapped and abducted to the city of Belleville (a scathing amalgam of New York, Quebec and Montreal) by the French Mafia to nefarious ends.

A skilled comic book writer and animator, Chomet’s debut feature is beautifully hand-drawn almost throughout. Only one scene- a balletic and heroic pedalo rescue pilgrimage across the Atlantic- uses CGI technology; this traditional animation technique is only one facet of the retrospective melting pot of Belleville Rendez-Vous. It revels in 1920’s jazz and music-hall and a love of the farcical visual comedy of the silent era.

There is very little dialogue in Chomet’s film, which makes it a truly international, border-crossing endeavour, but it is a peculiarly French affair. It pulls in disparate Francocentric influences from Jacques Tati (the originator of the story on which The Illusionist is based, incidentally), to car manufacturer Citroen and Django Reinhardt.

Chomet’s film is as idiosyncratic, personal and distinctive as handwriting and with the same cursive flow from scene to scene. The rhythmic musicality of the piece dictates the pace of the film more than any plot device, and the film morphs and sweeps along with the beat as only animation can. Visually, though somewhat gloomy and shaded with melancholia, it is a splendid, endearing film, full of heart and personality in a way that only the very best computer generated pictures can aspire to.

Belleville Rendez-Vous is sentimental and satirical, imploring you to love its weird denizens and their grotesque glamour, while damning and mocking both the slow paced small town ways of Champion and Madame Souza, and the guzzling, corrupt consumerists of the big city.

It is a whimsical, mesmeric, gripping adventure story that manages to look repellent and beautiful at the same time. Brisk and nostalgic, Belleville Rendez-Vous is like nothing else you’ve seen, at least until Chomet pulls The Illusionist out of his strange and charming hat.

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