timeouttoronto.ca - The Triplets of Belleville

Saturday, April 17, 2004

The Triplets of Belleville ~ A great film
(Currently being shown at various Toronto Festival Cinemas – click here for date/location)
Country Style’s downward spiral ~ still an OK schnitzel but little else!

It’s Saturday night at the Bloor Cinema (506 Bloor Street West) and I tuned into an amazing, 79-minute, must see 2003 animation masterpiece called The Triplets of Belleville or “Les Triplettes de Belleville.”

SYNOPSIS: In this animated French film, an orphaned boy, Champion, is raised by his grandmother, Madame Souza. Her gift of a dog, Bruno (who loves to bark at passing trains) and a tricycle starts a craze for cycle-racing that becomes the cornerstone of their life together. After years of relentless training, Champion makes it to the Tour de France, the toughest cycling event in the world. Champion trains relentlessly for the Tour de France. When the big race comes, Champion and a few of his fellow racers are kidnapped by some box-shouldered thugs who spirit them off to a vast seaport metropolis named Belleville (a surreal impression of 1930s-1950s Manhattan) where they are forced to pedal as part of a clandestine gambling operation organized by a mean French wine distributor. Bruno and grandma set out across the sea in a paddle boat to rescue their boy, but once ashore they soon become lost, hungry and penniless, that is until the frog-eating Triplets of Belleville, former scat singing jazz prodigies turned experimental musicians, come to their rescue. Filled with inspired, twisted imagery, this nearly dialogue-free film is a crowd-pleaser of unusual power, with the strange, measured pacing of a dream, and a great soundtrack of bizarre alternate-reality '30s jazz. It also offers a touching and believable evocation of a dog's life. A great throwback to the time before animation became dominated by CGI effects, Triplets Of Belleville is a very strange, very loving French salute to obsession, affection, and persistence.

For more information click here
Or click here to go to the official website

After an unsuccessful wait trying to get into Elixir (whose phone number 416-597-2915 doesn’t appear in the new Bell white pages). The four of us were told to come back in half in half an hour for a table. Forty-five minutes later we give up and went to the nearby (*/** out of *****) Country Style (450 Bloor Street West – 416-537-1745), which is now in its 27^th year. It was now 9:15 pm and obviously too late because the Country Style’s chef seems to have gone along with most of the customers. The passable goulash soup ($7.50) was only just warm, service sloppy and chicken paprikash ($11.50) truly awful - coming with an almost inedible, pasty, amazingly flavourless sauce (where was the sour cream?). Given the fact that the chicken itself had the taste and consistency of being previously canned, it really needed something special - other than my hefty dose of paprika from the shaker. The multitude of small dumplings and a side of salad were little recompense. Only the huge, sprawling, plate covering, Wiener schnitzel ($11.99) was worth eating. Perhaps things are better earlier in the day, but what a tragedy that what once was a wonderful, inexpensive tasty retreat for Hungarian cuisine, tastes more like the Danube today! The 2003-2004 edition of cheapeats toronto gives it an overly ambitious 3 out of 5 for food. Time to revise those ratings!

Screening date/location: (all locations are in Toronto)

The Music Hall (147 Danforth Ave. - 416-778-8272.) : April 28-30
The Fox (2236 Queen St. East - 416-691-7330) : May 1, 2
The Music Hall (147 Danforth Ave. - 416-778-8272) : May 1, 2
Kingsway (3030 Bloor St. West - 416-690-2600) : May 2, 5, 6, June 6-8
Royal Theatre (608 College St. - 416-516-4845) : May 2-4
Revue Cinema (400 Roncesvalles Ave. - 416-531-9959) : June 9, 10, 13

Click here for detailed screening time on each of those dates.

Copyright: Food & Beverage Testing Institute of Canada 2004
Prior written permission is required for any form of reproduction
(electronic or other wise) and or quotation.
Contact Michael Vaughan at
mbv@total.net