`Pretension and Flat Satire Stains "Triplets"`

It just feels terribly unsophisticated to say you don't like this film. Obviously you just didn't take the time to understand the thoroughly “French humor”. Apparently you have no appreciation for the tragically dying art of frame by frame, handmade animation. It's too quirky for you. You don't appreciate the illusions to the history of French cinema. You're infantile and biased for being turned off by what you perceive as Anti-Americanism. And on and on.

Just the same, I didn't really like this film. I more or less understood the picture, and I follow and appreciate the dozens of reasons to be in love with it, but I just happen not to agree.

Without doubt Sylvain Chomet's debut feature is a technical marvel to be admired and a welcome bit of variety for the open-minded (and city with art-house dwelling) American moviegoer. Beautifully drawn by a team of just three animators, the film tells the story of a French cyclist, his devoted mother and their faithful, if Garfield-esque, dog. And it does so with considerable joy and innovation, throwing sights and sounds at you you're not likely to expect from a feature that is animated, foreign or otherwise. However, it also throws in a good dose of pretension and a smugness that turned me off, rightly or wrongly.

From a comedic standpoint the film is a fairly overt homage to the great Jacques Tati, director and star of the M. Hulot films of the fifties and sixties. Without giving a lecture on a subject I'm only moderately versed in, I'll let you know that Tati's humor is physical in nature, a bit off-center, and largely based on patterns and their breaking. It's also undeniably brilliant. The Triplets of Belleville tries to take the Tati formula, or “spirit” perhaps, and add a darker, more risqué element to it. There's a big problem though. The live-action, "someone's really doing that" aspect of Tati's work is absolutely essential to its appeal. While his humor certainly has considerable conceptual merit, it's first and foremost a great, smart clown show being performed by a great physical actor. As animation, Triplets just doesn't quite cut it on this level, leaving its jokes, to my mind, interesting and clever, but not necessarily funny.

Story-wise, it's tough to crack. You can follow the narrative, but you also get the sense the movie doesn't want to be constricted by any real plot demands. It's weird and kind of makes sense and that's enough for a lot of people, but I think it's at least fair to suggest the film covers for itself through vagueness and by giving you quirkiness in place of character motivations and narrative flow.

All of this would be fine were the film to aspire to nothing more than whimsical abstraction. But it doesn't. Depending on who you ask, the story is full of commentary and criticism either cultural or political in nature. Again we're thrown back into the world of Tati. Without question Tati was one of the great satirists of contemporary culture. His films, particularly Playtime and Mon Oncle, are full of brilliant parodies of the “modern” home and office, featuring useless, unnecessary contraptions and comically mundane repetition. Triplets attempts to take this approach and tweak it a bit to attack contemporary consumerism, but in doing so it takes the easy road and makes its attack a political and uninteresting one in the process. On the overt level we have a giant fat Statue of Liberty munching on a hamburger. My problem here isn't the content, but the form. This isn't much more biting or insightful than the guy with "America Sucks" scratched onto his so-punk ripped denim jacket. They might as well have gone with and inter-title reading "America's fat and greedy." Well, yeah.

Also, the existence of that image forces me to read the entire story as one of the American powerhouse exploiting the world. In the film, the story's protagonist, the cyclist, is kidnapped and taken across the ocean to be a slave for the sake of rich people's amusement. I've read arguments that since the rich characters wear berets and the city is not overtly New York, this isn't necessarily an indictment of America's attitude towards the world. But, as quirky as the film may be, it still takes you across an ocean from France, and I'm pretty sure it's not an attack on India. Now I'm all for thoughtful criticism of America and I certainly wouldn't accuse the film of treating the nation unfairly. But its satire is obvious and flat and detracts from the film as opposed to adding to it. It provides a level of pretension and self-righteousness in direct contrast to its generally whimsical nature. In any case, it left a bad taste in my mouth.

Of course, the film is beautiful, often joyous and features interesting, great music throughout. You might also find it funny. You should go see it if you have any inclination and you'll probably think I'm an idiot for not loving it. Ah well. Write me a letter.

Rating: êê (out of 4)

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