A tour de force from French animator Sylvain Chomet.

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Twisted masterpieces like the animated film Belleville Rendez-Vous don’t come along very often. As director Sylvain Chomet explains, “You are just doing two seconds of animation a week, like pedalling a lot but not moving much.” It’s a nightmare that the lonesome figure at the centre of the film, Champ, is caught up in during the movie’s finale. Stolen away from his club-footed granny and porky hound Bruno during the Tour de France, an evil French mafioso forces Champ, an obsessive cyclist, to pedal in front of a film projection of an endless road. He seems fated to die of exhaustion.

Not the cheeriest of images, but then this isn’t Disney. “Definitely I am not doing an animated film for kids, because that’s what all the animated films are for. I feel there is so much to be done with animation for a large audience, and aiming mainly to the adults,” Chomet says with passion. Though, when it comes to age, he’s an equal opportunities animator. As with his earlier cartoon, The Old Lady And The Pigeons, his trademark crones are cast as leading ladies. “Yes I know,” he offers nervously. “I have to change now. I was getting a bit obsessed with that. I like very much old ladies who still have a lot of energy. They can be stubborn and very strong. A bit like fossils.”

Belleville Rendez-Vous is a tale of obsession and love, with a French flavour stronger than a hunk of Roquefort, but mainly it’s about personalities. Which is some feat for a movie with no dialogue, or actors behind the images. Even the film’s only hero, Bruno the dog, has a dark side. As Chomet says of Bruno’s real life prototype: “He was absolutely enormous. I think he was a labrador. He had very skinny legs and he was shaking all the time. He was so monstrous, this dog, that you would have very mixed feelings about him. It’s something I’ve tried to do with Bruno. Sometimes he’s really cute but sometimes he’s a bit disgusting I would say.”

Like Champ’s dream of the Tour de France, Belleville Rendez-Vous is a feat of lifelong commitment. The story took 15 years from development to realisation, and when Chomet says of his childhood, “I wasn’t biking but I took a pencil and actually never stopped drawing,” you believe him. Chomet cites influences from Tin Tin to Black Adder to Nick Park, but the truth is, this film’s like nothing else you’ll see. In the cycle race of modern animation, Chomet wears the yellow jersey. Skye Sherwin 29 August 03

Belleville Rendez-Vous, on selected release 29 August 03.

useful link: www.bellevillerendezvous.com