Director Sylvain Chomet marries his two loves, comics and film in The Triplets of Belleville. All images © 2003 Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.

The Triplets of Belleville (Les Triplettes de Belleville or Belleville Rendez-Vous), Sylvain Chomet’s animated feature film, which was released in early summer in France, is well on the way to achieving a success similar to that of Michel Ocelot with Kirikou et lasorcière (Kirikou and the Sorceress). But unlike Ocelot’s film, which was squarely aimed at the children’s audience, Belleville Rendez-Vous, with its idiosyncratic world and insistent cinematic references, is targeted more at adults. The film was produced by Didier Brunner’s company (Les Armateurs) that was also behind Kirikou, and co-produced by The Animation Unit, BBC (Great-Britain), Vivi Film (Belgium) and Champion Prods. (Canada).

Very typically Frenchie (but with no dialogue), The Triplets of Belleville owes a great deal to the world of contemporary French comic strips, but also to filmmakers such as Jean Pierre Jeunet (Amélie Poulain) and Marc Caro (Delicatessen). To date, the film has been sold to 37 countries and will be released in the U.S. by Sony Classic Pictures on Nov. 21, 2003. Its director Sylvain Chomet has, until now, pursued two simultaneous careers: one in comic strips, with his long term collaborator Nicolas de Crecy, the other in film, having made the half hour film La vieille dame et les pigeons (The Old Lady and the Pigeons), which won both the Grand Prix at Annecy in ‘97 and the Cartoon d ‘Or.

Somewhat dazed by the tumultuous reception of his film at Cannes and then at Annecy, Sylvain Chomet gave Animation World Magazine the following interview.

Chomet’s previous experience at working on every level of animation contributes to the high quality of The Triplets of Belleville.

Philippe Moins: Before you made your first animation, you worked at the Richard Purdum studio in London. Can you tell us about your experience there, which seemed quite decisive in terms of the later choices you made?

Sylvain Chomet: I started there in the mid-eighties, working on line-tests. I never even worked as an inbetweener. It was a job, to earn a living, since I wanted to go on making comic strips at the same time. I first worked as an animator there on a commercial for the medication Actifed. Michael Dudok de Wit was the chief animator on it and the great Belgian animators Paul Demeyer and Dirk van de Vondel were also working there. What I experienced there was part of what made me want to make animation films. Until then, I used to think that animation was something very hierarchical. Working at the studio, I realized that it was more of a team effort, a group of artisans, a kind of companionship. Richard Purdum recently went bust. I really hold it against the “majors” who screwed it all up by going there to recruit the best animators.