This wonderfully original and absorbing film is one of the most outrageous animation films you will ever see. The film’s desire for unapologetic creative license and its eventual success leaves one quite mystified. Flanked by an equally twisted yet sweet soundtrack, Triplets of Bellville is quite a force to recon with.

A grandmother trains her depressed kid into becoming a bicycle phenomenon to reckon with in Tour De France. However, things take a strange turn and the grandma, the champion and their dog end up in this surreal, gothic city which is really Manhattan called ‘Bellville’. Their adventures here along with their meeting with the aged vaudeville singers called the triplets of Bellville forms the premise of the film. What happens next is stuff pulled out of a very large hat.

Bellville is an animation where you connect to and feel for the characters far more than you do most regular films. The characters are all fantastic and they are a pleasure to watch. Their consistency forms the integral driving force of the film. So powerful is the force of imagery that the film is primarily silent but you don’t even notice it, so engrossed you are in the fairy tale world of the triplets.

The animation is all hand-drawn and the creativity this ignites as against computer animated feature is just too high. Everything is out of proportion and yet conveys far more realistic meaning than most modern CGI animation does.

This film is worth watching not just once but over and over again.