With Belleville Rendez-Vous, Sylvain Chomet has written a love letter to the great Gallic passions, not least the Tour de France, cabaret and cinema itself. His grandly magical film spins into action when a cyclist is kidnapped by a pair of sinister, square-shouldered Mafia men. The gangsters drag our luckless hero stateside to Belleville, a dazzling metropolis with skyscrapers that never stop and citizens suffering from the sort of all-American obesity often seen in Gary Larson's The Far Side.

Following in the baddies' path is a little lady, her plump pooch and three singing spinsters, a yesteryear sensation celebrated as "the triplets of Belleville". It's this unlikely trio who kick-start the film with a slinky introductory number showcasing all of the wit and inventive flair of Chomet's vision. The film's other musical interludes - often improvisations, comically contrived in a fashion reminiscent of Delicatessen's set pieces - punctuate the narrative with a series of striking exclamation points.

DID YOU KNOW?
	Chomet's short film The Old Lady and the Pigeons (1998) was nominated for both a César and an Oscar.   Belleville Rendez-Vous was specifically designed to be an animation that wasn't just for kids.

Not only has Chomet concocted an ingenious plot and a magical landscape for his film, he has also managed to make even the most incidental character unforgettable - watch for a foppish, ingratiating waiter and a buck-toothed boy scout. His powers of invention are highlighted in the way he multiplies a simple image or motif into innumerable incarnations. The triplets' seafood cuisine, for example, extends to frog lollies, frog kebabs and a bizarre sort of frog popcorn, while bicycles not only propel the plot but are also shown functioning as weathervanes and percussion instruments.

Densely orchestrated but handled with the lightest touch, Belleville Rendez-Vous will leave you, like its characters, either speechless or breaking into song.

Chris Wiegand