The temporary nature of animation productions disturbs Chomet. He wishes for a more permanent studio system for animated films.

PM: So no dialogue in your next project?

SC: There will be some dialogue in my next animation, but it won’t be that talky. I’d like to get near to what Grimault and Prévert did with Le Roi et l’oiseau (The King and Mr Bird), something poetic. It is set at the time of the Paris Commune in 1871, with a tough, dark side to it, and Baudelaire…

PM: To return to Belleville Rendez-Vous, it has been well received, hasn’t it?

SC: At Cannes, I got the reception, which I would have expected from Annecy. And at Annecy, it was just absolutely crazy. The film has already notched up one of the highest foreign sales scores for a recent French production. Before Cannes, 25 countries had already acquired the film; it’s now 37, including the U.S., which was initially quite wary, as usual. I’m worried about the Americans. Will they cut some things out? I know that a lot of there appreciate my work. The problem is that the people in charge at the big companies are rather more censorious.

PM: What do you think of John Lasseter’s work?

SC: I adore what he does, along with the work of Nick Park and Miyazaki. I met him in San Francisco, and visited Pixar. But I am more skeptical about 3D computer animation in general.

PM: You wouldn’t like to work in 3D?

Making a dialogue-free movie like The Triplets of Belleville was a liberating experience for Chomet.

SC: No, I draw, and it’s drawing that interests me. 3D terrifies me. The idea that, in plasticiene, one of your characters might melt, or that you might have to start all over again from scratch because you’ve knocked against the edge of the table — that’s not for me. If I don’t like a drawing, I simply tear it up and start again. Computer 3D doesn’t interest me; I like a pencil and a piece of paper. That said, what we’ve done in 2D in my film was sometimes treated in 3D “underneath.” But what I am really interested in is drawing caricature, how far you can push it, seeing if you can achieve something really strong, almost abstract… If one day I really want to do something three-dimensional, I think I would shoot live-action. I am, as it happens, likely to be doing some live-action, a story involving dance.

PM: Do you have any desire to work on projects for children?

SC: But I am doing already! My film has been seen by children, even very young kids, and it works very well for them. We have to stop being so over-protective of children. If we want them to become tolerant and non-violent we have to show them lots of different things, and above all, not only stories that have happy endings. If we don’t then we end up with notions like that of Bush’s cherished “axis of evil.”

Philippe Moins is a writer and teacher in Belgium, and also the co-director of Anima 2003.