On February 19, UMS and the Michigan Theater hosted Benoit Charest and his Le Terrible Orchestre de Belleville, who performed their “hot jazz” soundtrack to The Triplets of Belleville alongside the film.
This iconic film from 2003 follows a woman whose grandson was kidnapped by the mafia while racing in the Tour de France. With a zany crew of companions, including a spacey dog and the Triplets of Belleville, three elderly ladies who used to be popular singers, she embarks on an adventure to find him.
I, unlike one of our other writers who reviewed this same event, new nothing about this film or its soundtrack going into the event. I was captivated by its bold, clever, and unconventional animation and narrative techniques. The drawings emphasized the diversity and idiosyncrasies of human beings; oversized noses, lopsided bodies, buck teeth and all. The film contained no dialogue and thus invited the viewer to read into the film closely.
The soundtrack fit the film like a glove, capturing its spunk, poignancy, and occasional darkness in full. It was both accessible and extremely intricate; while being emotionally direct and easily enjoyable, it was often experimental with texture, rhythm, and harmony.
One of the scenes in which this was most evident in the scene in which the grandmother is accompanying The Triplets on a wheel, slightly offsetting the rhythmic pulse of the original song, “Belleville Rendez-Vous” and incorporating a Bach melody. The musicians performed this live, slipping into the voices characters of The Triplets and nailing the tricky rhythms.
Other songs, like the original “Belleville Rendez-Vous,” “Pa Pa Pa Palavas,” and “Generique d’ouverture” were purely fun and catchy. The musicians maintained a bright, contagious energy during these upbeat tracks.
I was deeply impressed by the ease and virtuosity the Benoit Charest and Le Terrible Orchestre de Belleville brought to the concert. There were times while I was watching in which I forgot that the music was being performed live; it melded so well with the film and brought it to life as one, cohesive entity.
