SYLVAIN CHOMET

Bil’s rating (out of 5):   BBBBB. 

France/Belgium/Canada/United Kingdom, 2003.  Les Armateurs, Production Champion, Vivi Film, France 3 Cinéma, RG Prince Films, Canal+, Gimages 3, Cofimage 12, Téléfilm Canada, Société de Développement des Entreprises Culturelles, Centre National de la Cinématographie, Fonds Film in Vlaanderen, Nationale Loterij van België, British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC Worldwide, Département de la Charente, Région Poitou-Charentes, Cartoon, MEDIA Programme of the European Union, Procirep, Happy Madison Productions, Rija Films.  Screenplay by Sylvain Chomet.  Produced by Didier Brunner, Viviane Vanfleteren.  Music by Benoit Charest.  Production Design by Evgeni Tomov.  Film Editing by Dominique Brune, Chantal Colibert Brunner, Dominique Lefever.  

In this delightful animated film, a champion cyclist is kidnapped by the Belleville Wine Mafia during his participation in the Tour de France. The bad guys have no idea what they’re in for when they take him away from his grandmother, a tiny Portuguese woman with a club foot, thick glasses and an insane devotion to her charge. She travels with her trusty dog to Belleville and hooks up with a once-famous trio of singers to find her family member and restore him to their quiet life living under a train track in the French countryside. This film by Sylvain Chomet (La Vielle Dame Et Les Pigeons) is imaginative and colourful, skillfully directed with about two spoken lines of dialogue and the rest of it told through action and visual expression. The music is a thorough pleasure, the characters adorable, and in the end full of palpable tenderness.

Academy Award Nominations:  Best Original Song (“Belleville Rendez-vous”); Best Animated Feature

Toronto International Film Festival:  2003