French Mafia Agents

These characters are very strange but incredibly stylised, again however following the fundamental shapes to portray a certain personality or image. The use of squares in a character gives an impression of strength, here Chomet as taken that concept to the ultimate extreme and created a character which is basically a square block of pure iron. What I like about this character is the way Chomet has managed to create a character with no personality at all, which is appropriate for the character because as one of the mafia boss’s henchmen, he is there to follow rules and act on only what he is told.

The Champion

Possibly inspired by Segar’s Popeye, the champ character is an incredible stereotypical impression of an over obsessed cyclist. Chomet has taken the fundamental rules of character design and applied his artistic licence on top, naturally a cyclist is thin, doesn’t need to have much upper body strength because all of the energy is centred on the leg muscles to push the pedals. With this in mind Chomet has given the champ massively over exaggerated leg muscles on top on these thin bones almost rendering the character to look deformed. The characters stance reflects that of an old man, tired and gloomy with dark and baggy sleepy eyes; it’s as if all of the life has been sucked out of his body and injected back into his legs.

Les Triplettes de Belleville

The animated Film “Les Triplettes de Belleville” Also known as “Belleville Rendez-Vous” has been one of the most popular in whole Cannes Festival, was nominated for two academy awards and won best animated picture film. Directed and written by Sylvain Chomet, Set in the 1930s the film focus on an Old Portuguese emigrant woman (Madame Souza) and her grandson who live together, for her grandson’s birthday she buys him a tricycle. Years later you find out that the grandson has perused his talent for cycling and has become successful winning many awards.

As the film progresses we follow Madame Souza and her grandson through his vigorous training schedule for the Tour de France, long cycling sessions up exaggerated hillsides while for his trainer Madame Sousa keeps the rhythm with constant whistling.

During the Tour de France the Grandson and two other cyclists are kidnapped by the French mafia, from this point on the film turns into a chase across sea to a fictional metropolis called Belleville where Madame Souza and her beloved dog Bruno stumble upon and team up with the Belleville Sisters who at in their prime where a world famous song-and-dance team from the days of Fred Astaire.

When eventually finding the cyclists it turns out that the French mafia have been using them for a betting game, Madame Sousa and her team break the cyclists free, all hell breaks loose, and the chase is on by the mafia Godfather himself!

In terms of the narrative behind this film, you could say it’s a bit loose around the edges. Some might have to watch it more than once to fully understand the plot. I don’t see it this way, to me the visual aesthetic of the architecture; vehicles and characters accompany the narrative perfectly by engaging in a relationship filled with exaggeration and emotion. Let’s not forget that the whole film is shown via the characters expressions alone because there is no speech throughout apart from occasional clips shown on the television and music and song. Fairly brave for an animation in this day and age, and explains why it’s not well known amongst most. Stereotypically, if the film was produced to appeal to an American audience, it would be a crime.

The Design of the characters is exaggerated specifically to emphasize how the character is feeling emotionally and physically thus enabling the audience to not only understand the narrative effectively and to feel connected to the characters.