Line #68 WesternAnimation/TheTripletsofBelleville


1	[[quoteright:320:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/The_Triplets_of_Belleville_8037.gif]]
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3	''Les Triplettes de Belleville'', a.k.a. ''The Triplets of Belleville'' or ''Belleville Rendez-vous'', is a French animated film by animator and writer Creator/SylvainChomet (''WesternAnimation/TheOldLadyAndThePigeons''). For all its quirky twists and turns, it ultimately becomes an introspective character study rather than simply a piece of popular entertainment. It's also tied together by some truly fantastic jazz and period-inspired music by Benoît Charest and features almost no dialogue.
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5	Madame Souza lives with her recently orphaned grandson Champion, who appears understandably depressed. In an effort to cheer him up, she buys him a [[CanineCompanion dog, Bruno]], and (after discovering his love of cycling) a tricycle.
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7	[[TimePassesMontage Twenty years later]], Champion [[TrainingFromHell has become a ferocious cyclist under his grandmother's stern training regimen]]. Bruno has gotten enormously fat (except for his legs) and lives to eat and bark at the trains that pass perilously close to their ramshackle house. Champion enters the UsefulNotes/TourDeFrance, but is kidnapped partway through by mysterious [[TheMafia mob thugs]].
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9	Madame Souza, with Bruno's help, follows them by truck, on foot, and by boat, winding up in the fanciful [[TheCity city of Belleville]]. Here, she encounters the eponymous [[CoolOldLady triplets]], aged former Vaudeville stars now living out their days fishing for frogs with hand grenades and playing trios on the [[EverythingIsAnInstrument newspaper, refrigerator, and vacuum cleaner]]. Together, the motley crew must use their quick wits and bizarre skills to outfox the mob and rescue Champion.
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11	The film was produced in 2002 and premiered at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2003, before being released throughout France on June 11, 2003. The film was also screened at the 2003 Telluride and Toronto International Film Festivals.
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13	----
14	!!''The Triplets of Belleville'' provides examples of:
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16	* TwoDVisualsThreeDEffects: Though the movie embodies the classic cell animation style, there are moments where one notices conspicuous CG, most often during scenes featuring bicycle races. Also, the cyclist-shaped weather vane atop Madame Souza's house.
17	* AbnormalLimbRotationRange: The maître d's back (because he is a ''spineless'' sycophant). To the point that his head is often ''upside down''.
18	* TheAllegedCar: The French version: the mobsters drive stretch versions of Citroën 2CVs, which are ridiculously underpowered cars to which a Volkswagen Beetle compares favorably. Fittingly enough, they're shown to be as underpowered and easily disabled as a stretch version of an actual 2CV would be, although they probably wouldn't be destroyed by a collision into a baby carriage or be able to be flipped over by a MiniatureSeniorCitizen with a club foot.
19	* AllThereInTheScript: The Triplets are never individually named in the movie. However, the film's animation credits indicate their names are Rose, Blanche and Violette.
20	* AmbiguouslyGay: The guy that rents the paddleboats. If you see the inside of his shack, there are photos of shirtless and/or half-naked men all over the walls.
21	* AmbiguouslyRelated: It isn't entirely clear if the eponymous Triplets are actually sisters (they do have physical differences, so they're not identical twins) or if this is just a stage name they picked ages ago. They certainly are inseparable anyway.
22	* AnimalMotifs: A few of the characters, like the bikers, mechanic, and the Triplets of Belleville, have striking similarities to particular animals:
23	** The bikers become overworked horses, snorting and whinnying. When one gets too tired, he gets put down exactly like a lame race horse.
24	** The mechanic most of all. He's short, fat, has large ears, normally appears in a kneeling position when operating the bicycle simulator from the inside (like in a hole) and emits something resembling a squeak every few seconds. And he's got a [[IncrediblyLamePun moustache]].
25	* ArtShift: After the opening 1930s-style TV broadcast, the art style changes to what we see in the above image.
26	* AscendedFanboy: Champion; as a kid, he has a journal full of newspaper clippings of professional bike races. As an adult, he's competing in the Tour de France.
27	* AspectRatioSwitch: Happens at the beginning, as the "Belleville Rendezvous" sequence was on a TV.
28	* AwardBaitSong: "Belleville Rendez-vous" got nominated for the Oscar for Best Song but lost to "Into the West" from ''Return of the King''.
29	* BabyCarriage: A car full of {{Mooks}} hits a baby carriage. The baby carriage is fine; the car is totaled. Well, [[RuleOfCool why not?]]
30	* BigApplesauce: Played with. Belleville is a broad satire of America in which almost every single citizen is incredibly fat -- down to the statue in its harbour, its crosswalk icons, and even its Academy Award statuettes -- but its heavy French influences and architectural flourishes also evoke Montreal and Paris as well as New York. Evgeni Tomov's direction from Chomet in designing the city was to create a place that ''feels'' as if it exists somewhere, but doesn't correspond closely to any real-world location.
31	* BigFriendlyDog: Bruno is grossly overweight, but still deceptively energetic.
32	* BigGuyLittleGuy: Taken to its logical extreme. ''Every'' mob boss is pint-sized while all of their goons are comically broad-shouldered.
33	* BigThinShortTrio: Subtly done with the Triplets; the one in red is slightly taller than her sisters and has a wide, somewhat masculine, jawline, the one in green has the longest, thinnest nose, and the one in purple is the shortest and has a comparatively squat nose.
34	* BlackComedy: The film thrives on surreal images and scenes that gleefully tap-dance across the [[SlidingScaleOfComedyAndHorror lines separating humor and horror]]. Exhibit A: The entirety of the 1930s-style TV broadcast opening.[[note]] It involves, among other things, Fred Astaire being eaten alive by his own shoes, the male audience members turning into monkeys to eat Josephine Baker's banana dress, and a three-story dancing baby. The rest of the film is more subdued, but not by ''that'' much.[[/note]]
35	* BlackComedyRape: Creator/JosephineBaker is swarmed by lustful fans who [[LiteralMetaphor transform into monkeys and begin ripping at her banana skirt]] before chasing her off stage.
36	* BlandNameProduct: One of the products sponsoring the Tour de France among others is called "La Valkyrie Fromage", which the winner takes a photo with its [[BrawnHilda mascots/models]]. Its logo is very reminiscent of the [[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_vache_qui_rit Laughing Cow Cheese]] (called "La Vache Qui Rit" in France), as it is the picture of a red-skinned Valkyrie wearing a helmet with cow-like horns, smiling.
37	* {{Bookends}}: The only spoken dialogue that Madame Souza has in the movie both opens and closes the picture.
38	* BrickJoke: After discovering Champion's kidnapping, Madame Souza [[spoiler:rents a pedal boat for twenty minutes. We don't see the owner again until [[TheStinger the end credits]], when he's still standing there, looking out at the beach and checking his watch. (This may be a ShoutOut to ''Film/{{Airplane}}'']].)
39	* BringIt: When Madame Souza sees the mafia boss still chasing them, who had just undergone an UnderTheTruck InstantConvertible, she steps off the bike simulator and [[GoThroughMe stands in front of them]]. [[spoiler:She simply uses her clubbed heel to kick them off the bridge]].
40	* ButtSticker: Two of the women in the opening scene each has her husband stuck on her butt; one is revealed to be flattened and the other is stuck between her butt cheeks, the latter of which may be ''dead'' from asphyxiation. The one with her husband between her buttcheeks is wearing a widow's veil. Make of that what you will.
41	* CharlesAtlasSuperpower: [[spoiler:Champion's legs are strong enough to pull the entire stage his bike is rigged to during the climax, and he shows no more exhaustion doing so than when his bike was in a fixed position.]]
42	* ChaseScene: The film's climax -- a classic car chase, complete with [[LemmingCops pursuers gradually being killed off]], [[EveryCarIsAPinto cars exploding at the slightest provocation]], an UnderTheTruck InstantConvertible, an [[FruitCart imperiled baby carriage]], the RailroadTracksOfDoom ''and'' a TrainEscape... truly {{Troperiffic}}. The fact that several of these are played with and subverted (and the fact it's ended by a tiny old lady ''kicking over a speeding car'') saves it from ClicheStorm. It's also [[LowSpeedChase incredibly slow]] -- the heroes' escape vehicle is the bike simulator that moves at a visibly slow clip. The cars that give chase ''do'' catch up, but because the bike simulator is wide enough to take up most of the road, it is impossible to overtake it or even pull up next to it; the Mafia goons' options are limited to "pull up right behind it and shoot at the drivers."
43	* ChekhovsGun:
44	** [[spoiler:Madame Souza's shoe's extended heel]]. Actually, just about every element introduced in the first half of the movie is one. Including, of course, the eponymous triplets.
45	** The Triplets are incredibly protective of their vacuum cleaner, icebox, and newspapers. Exactly why eventually becomes clear.
46	* ChekhovsSkill:
47	** How does a little old lady [[spoiler:keep up with a massive ship in a cheap pedalo]]? She's just spent years training, and keeping pace with, a professional cyclist.
48	** We see near the beginning that Madame Souza constantly blows on a whistle during Champion's training to make him keep a constant pace. [[spoiler:When she uses it during the climax it causes him to speed up enough to allow them to escape out of the building.]]
49	* ColourCodedForYourConvenience:
50	** Madame Souza and her grandson Champion are Portuguese; as such, they are mostly wearing their flag's red and green.
51	** The titular triplets' names (not that they're [[AllThereInTheManual stated in the movie itself]]) are Rose, Blanche, and Violette, the colors of the French flag (with Violette as a substitute for blue). Rose and Violette wear red and purple, respectively, while Blanche, in a [[SubvertedTrope subversion]], wears green instead.
52	* ContrivedCoincidence: Madame Souza just happens to run into the Triplets, who just happen to work in the club patronized by the mob boss holding Champion hostage, who wiped Champion's forehead with his handkerchief, allowing Bruno to pick up the scent.
53	* CoolOldLady: Both Madame Souza and the Triplets are incredibly tenacious and handy despite getting up there in age.
54	* CrapsackWorld: Madame Souza's countryside home quickly gets swallowed up by the dreary urban sprawl of Paris, and Belleville has either disgusting amounts of opulence or poverty -- everyone is either obese or just skin and bones. And the less said about the food, the better.
55	* {{Determinator}}: Repeat: Madame Souza ''crossed the Atlantic on a pedal boat'' to rescue her grandson.
56	* DiligentDraftAnimal: Invoked, Champion, a bicyclist, is [[AnimalMotif drawn to resemble a horse]], with an elongated face and nose, droopy eyes, and long and skinny, but muscular, limbs. He regularly goes through TrainingFromHell to compete in bicycle races. However, he is suddenly kidnapped by TheMafia, who force him and other kidnapped bikers to ride mechanical bicycles until they run out of energy, at which point [[spoiler: they shoot the tired bikers like a farmer putting down a horse]].
57	* DingyTrainsideApartment: Madame Souza's house is right next to the train line, and the family dog Bruno rushes to the window every hour to bark at the passing trains. Later on, when she moves into the Triplets' apartment in Belleville, USA, it's next to an elevated track and Bruno barks at the trains every few minutes.
58	* DistantEpilogue: The film ends with an elderly Champion watching the film's events on TV, while hearing his grandmother's words [[BookEnds from the beginning of the movie]].
59	* DistressedDude: Champion, who gets kidnapped by the Mafia and has to be rescued by his grandmother.
60	* TheDividual:
61	** The eponymous Triplets essentially function as a single character and are seen together for the majority of their screen time. They shortly separate only when one of them goes frog-fishing.
62	** The French Mafia goons are not only identical, they're frequently shown in pairs standing so close together that their suits appear to merge into one big square of black. The ones we're first introduced to even mirror each other's movements.
63	* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything?: The kidnapped cyclists [[spoiler: are put on display like prize race horses and ride their mechanical bicycles until they drop off from exhaustion, sounding winded and exhausted to the point of being useless and the mafia likewise kill them by shooting them in the head. Champion's face also appears to have some equine features(his overlong eyelashes and nose).]]
64	* DreadfulMusician: Subverted. Madame Souza has a very good ear in music, and can make do with a bicycle wheel's spokes as a tuned percussive instrument with just a bit of adjusting, yet when you hear her play the piano...
65	* DreamSequence: From a dog, no less. Several in fact. In one dream sequence, Bruno dreams that Champion is hauling him around a gigantic version of his dog food bowl. In another, Bruno dreams that he's actually riding on one of the trains he barks at, and the people outside are barking at him.
66	* DullSurprise: Madame Souza and Champion react to ''everything'' with the same ambiguous stare.
67	* {{Eagleland}}: Belleville is a satire of both America and Canada, but it's hard to miss the obese Art/StatueOfLiberty clutching a hamburger and the equally plump citizens. A tad hilarious; consider who ''gave'' Americans the Statue of Liberty, and the fact the French keep a smaller twin of her in Paris.
68	* TheEeyore: Champion always looks sad and tired, though it's possible that his face just naturally looks that way, as he wears a contented smile as he drifts off to sleep after a day of TrainingFromHell.
69	* EmpathyPet: To an extent, Bruno. His dreams often reflect his owners' current circumstances, albeit in an abstract manner.
70	* EveryCarIsAPinto: One of the 2CVs used by the bad guys does burst into flames after falling down a flight of stairs.
71	* EverythingIsAnInstrument: The Triplets use common household items as the "instruments" in their act.
72	* EyesAlwaysShut: The mafia Dons and the Triplets, whose eyes are shown squinted and hidden behind their wrinkles. The maître d tries to do this, but fails at it.
73	* TheFamilyForTheWholeFamily: [[ZigZaggingTrope Zigzags]] throughout the movie. The Mafia are [[LemmingCops pretty]] [[ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy incompetent]] but are genuinely menacing at times, such as when the bookie [[spoiler:shoots the fallen cyclist]].
74	* {{Fanservice}}: A caricature of Creator/JosephineBaker appears during the opening vaudeville show, complete with the topless dancing and curvy figure.
75	* FantasticFragility: The French mobster's cars and towering cronies; it doesn't take much to knock them out. The cars can't even make turns without toppling over.
76	* FantasyLandmarkEquivalent: A parody of the Statue of Liberty is depicted as an obese woman holding a hamburger on top of her tablet and an ice cream cone instead of a torch.
77	* FastFoodNation: The titular city is a caricature of UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity, where the citizens are almost exclusively grossly overweight people eating hamburgers and other junk food.
78	* FatAndSkinny: The short and squat Madame Souza and her gangly grandson Champion, respectively.
79	* FiveSecondForeshadowing: Just before we see that the Triplets go fishing with grenades, there's a shot of two frogs crawling into the marsh; [[BlackComedyAnimalCruelty one is three-legged, while the other is two-legged and missing an eye, suggesting that they survived the last time]]. Many also appear shell-shocked and dazed from previous explosions.
80	* FlashForward: The end where we see an elderly Champion watching a television and reflecting on the events as told to him by an absent Madame Souza.
81	* FlawlessToken: The elderly female protagonists are resourceful, creative and generous. All male characters are either villains or weak and passive people -- or turn into horny monkeys.
82	* FlippingTheBird: A random Belleville citizen, begging on the street, does this after Bruno eats the sausage the beggar apparently was saving for lunch.
83	* {{Foreshadowing}}: [[spoiler:The cyclist who drops out of the Tour de France first due to exhaustion also ends up being the first to pass out on the mafia's simulated bike race, [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness which ends up getting him killed]]. Champion and the guy who passed out second manage to hold out till the end.]]
84	** Earlier in the movie, theres a newspaper article about a body being found. [[spoiler: The skeletal remains have a bullet in the head.]]
85	* FormerlyFat: Champion starts off as a chubby kid, sitting around the house with nothing to do, until Madame Souza discovers his love for bikes and gets him a tricycle. Years later, as he's been cycling for half of his life, he's now rail thin with massive, overly developed legs. The only thing that really stays the same are his beaky nose and the dark circles under his eyes.
86	* FreezeFrameBonus: No matter how many times you've watched this movie, there are things you might've missed because of the crazy details:
87	** Special mention must be the newspaper Madame Souza read about the conspiracy about the French Mafia kidnapping cyclists from the Tour de France, using them for their own benefit. There's even a picture of someone's skull with a hole on its head, apparently dug up from wherever it was buried. [[spoiler:And when you consider the fate of that one cyclist that fell off of his bike, it's assumed that they've been doing this for a long time and have been getting away with it]]!
88	** The waitress that serves hamburgers has a circular pin on her chest, and something that seems to be her name (could be her name tag?) written on it: Fanny Roberts.
89	* FryingPanOfDoom: The Triplets and Mme. Souza get past the first guard at the mafia lair by whacking him on the head with a frying pan. And then the mechanic gets the same treatment before being replaced by Madame Souza.
90	* GainaxEnding: The film ends with a DistantEpilogue where a much older Champion watches the film's events on TV, hearing his grandmother asking the same question as she did in the beginning of the movie. The most likely explanation is that the film's events were a FlashBack.
91	-->'''Madame Souza:''' [[CallBack Is that it, then? Is it over, do you think? What have you got to say to Grandma?]]\
92	'''Champion:''' ''[now an old man]''It's over, Grandma.
93	* GiantMook: The Mafia bodyguards are all enormous men with exaggeratedly broad shoulders. They're almost reminiscent of refrigerators.
94	* {{Gonk}}: The most pleasant-looking characters (like Madame Souza and the Triplets) verge close to being UglyCute, while the least attractive ones resemble grotesque caricatures more than they do actual humans.
95	* GratuitousEnglish: Briefly, when a Belleville waitress finds out that Madam Souza has no money, she says, "No money, no hamburgers!"
96	* GratuitousForeignLanguage: Madame Souza's terrible song at the piano in the Triplets' house is sung in Portuguese.
97	* GratuitousItalian: The song heard in the barbershop is entirely in Italian, which is [[BilingualBonus hilarious if you actually know Italian]].
98	* HandicappedBadass: The guitar player in the intro number is missing three of his left hand's fingers; this does not hinder him from playing harmoniously. When you think that it doesn't get better, he starts playing a solo with his left foot's toes replacing his hand, which is free now to remove the cigarette from his mouth. [[note]]The guitar player is a direct caricature of the great French guitarist Django Reinhardt, who really did have two fingers burnt to uselessness when he was caught in a house fire. Didn't impair his brilliant performance a bit.[[/note]]
99	** Madame Souza herself has a club foot, but it doesn't slow down her mission to rescue her grandson for even a second.
100	* HomemadeInventions: All of Champion's training equipment, presumably bodged together by himself and his grandmother. He sits on a contraption that measures his weight to let him know when he's eaten enough; the phonograph is pedal-powered; and she massages his aching muscles with various repurposed household items (including an eggbeater and a push mower).
101	* HugeGuyTinyGirl: As an adult, Champion is about three times taller than his grandmother.
102	* ImperialStormtrooperMarksmanshipAcademy: The French one-hundred-plus mobsters are prompted to aim and shoot at the Triplets and Madame Souza; between them and later the car mooks, they don't land a single hit.
103	* InTheBlood: Implied. The only image we see of Champion's parents depicts them happily riding a bike together.
104	* IWantMyMommy: Never actually said aloud, but the mafia dons mewl like babies [[spoiler:just before they're all blown up.]]
105	* IWasQuiteTheLooker: The Triplets looked like cute rubberhose characters in their youth.
106	* LawOfInverseRecoil: During the chase scene, one of the goons pulls out a rocket launcher and fires at the fleeing riders. The force of the recoil causes him to miss wildly ''and'' flips his entire car over.
107	* {{Leitmotif}}: The Bach prelude played on television that inspires Madame Souza to cheer up a despondent Champion by teaching him to play the piano accompanies his misfortune again when the French Mafia starts kidnapping cyclists, and later, Madame Souza switches from playing "Belleville Rendez-vous" for the Triplets to the same song, likely implying that she explains her situation and troubles to them offscreen. A jazzy rendition of the same piece can be heard in the background at the French restaurant where the Triplets perform.
108	* MadeOfIron: Bruno doubles for a car wheel and can still gallop with Souza on his back.
109	* MailmanVsDog: Bruno barks at the train each time it passes his house -- he even knows when it's about to come. Then comes an InvertedTrope when Bruno dreams he is on the train and the passengers are barking at him. Then in Belleville the trope is taken to its LogicalExtreme, with an elevated train passing every ''two'' minutes and driving Bruno to distraction.
110	* MeaningfulName: Champion, who is trained to win the Tour de France and was winning in the Mafia's betting circuit, but, also, he's one of the few to not be killed by the Mafia.
111	* MimeAndMusicOnlyCartoon: Except for the songs and a few snatches of dialogue, most notably [[spoiler:the recurring line that {{bookends}} the film]].
112	* MiniatureSeniorCitizens: Madame Souza for the most part (she's small enough to ''ride Bruno''), while the Triplets seem to be of the same height as they were decades ago.
113	* MisterBig: All mafia bosses in Belleville are tiny people accompanied by GiantMook bodyguards.
114	* MusclesAreMeaningful: The only parts of Champion's body that aren't twig thin are his overly-muscled calves. [[spoiler:During the climax, he's proven to have developed superhuman strength within them.]]
115	* NationalStereotypes:
116	** The film pokes fun at various aspects of the French, such as frog-eating (the Triplets dine on tadpole-seasoned frogs), their obsession with the Tour de France (or the Circuit de France as it's called in-world), their poor dental care (nearly every French character has a severe overbite), and their infamously poor-quality [[TheAllegedCar cars]]. Wine is also very prominent with all French characters.
117	** It also shows that the entire population of America is morbidly obese.
118	* NeverMessWithGranny:
119	** Madame Souza is a tiny, club-footed old woman who is persistent enough to follow an ocean liner across the entire Atlantic in a ''foot-pedalled boat'', at night, during a huge storm at sea, to the accompaniment of the Kyrie from Mozart's Mass in C minor. She kicks over a car too.
120	** The eponymous Triplets are no slouches either; for elderly vaudeville performers, they have surprising proficiency with explosives. The Triplet in red also [[spoiler:knocks the bookie out cold with a headbutt]].
121	* [[NiceGirl Nice Lady]]: The Triplets themselves are eccentric but very pleasant people. They are extremely friendly, kind, and they help Madame Souza save her grandson, Champion in the final act.
122	* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed:
123	** The opening sequence, "Belleville Rendez-vous", is [[ShowWithinAShow a film]] from TheRoaringTwenties, and features caricatures of classic stars such as Music/DjangoReinhardt and a topless Creator/JosephineBaker. The tap dancer who is eaten by his shoes is Creator/FredAstaire. The joyful conductor is a caricature of French singer Charles Trenet.
124	** When the film breaks, RTF switches over to a tape of a performance of Bach on solo piano. The pianist is immediately identifiable as Glenn Gould; he is hunched over the keyboard, hums along with his performance, and plays the piece (the C minor prelude from the first ''Well-Tempered Clavier'') much more slowly than most performers.
125	** UsefulNotes/CharlesDeGaulle is seen speaking on television later in the film.
126	** The accordion player getting gnats stuck in her teeth at the Tour de France is a caricature of [[http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvette_Horner Yvette Horner]] (and according to an interview with Yvette, that scene from the movie was pretty much TruthInTelevision).
127	** The big-toothed winner of the Tour is a caricature of Jacques Anquetil, the first man to win the Tour de France five times. This cements the film as taking place in the early Sixties, as Anquetil had a four-year run of championships from 1961 to '64.
128	** Even the ''audio track'' gets in on this:
129	*** The radio commentator on the Tour is based on the voice of a real person, in this case racer-turned-sportswriter Robert Chapatte.
130	*** The songs overheard in the film include [[InTheStyleOf style parodies]] of Edith Piaf and Serge Gainsbourg.
131	* NonHumansLackAttributes: Averted, Bruno has very visible testicles as well as nipples.
132	* NonIndicativeName: "Belleville" isn't actually such a beautiful city.
133	* NoodlePeople: Every cyclist is depicted as being rail-thin and very tall.
134	* TheOnlyOne: Souza (and Bruno) set off to save Champion herself. No mention is made if PoliceAreUseless -- they aren't even brought up.
135	* PaperThinDisguise: Souza's disguising herself as the mechanic, with oven mitts for ears, a false mustache and buck teeth the Triplets paste onto Madame Souza's upper lip.
136	* ParentalAbandonment: The first act of the film is Madame Souza trying to cheer up her grandson whose parents have recently died prior to the real story.
137	* PedestrianCrushesCar: One of the gangster cars flips after hitting a BabyCarriage; either the baby was just big enough (and he ''is'' big), or the mob's cars are just that flimsy.
138	* PicturePerfectPresentation: Used a few times for transitions; notably, De Gaulles' picture on a newspaper switching to the president himself giving a speech on TV.
139	* PoliceAreUseless: Police? What police? If it weren't for that one short newspaper article released by the police of Belleville, one might believe that police do not exist in that city, or even that universe.
140	* PretentiousLatinMotto: All the French Mafia's license plates say ''In vino veritas'': "In wine, [there is] truth."
141	* TheQuietOne: Champion. While we hear him make noises a few times as a kid, he's totally silent as an adult. [[spoiler:The DistantEpilogue has him speak his one and only actual line as an old man.]]
142	* RedOniBlueOni: The expressive, jovial Triplets and the reserved, stoic Madame Souza, respectively.
143	* {{Retraux}}: The opening sequence was animated in a similar way to the classic Max Fleischer cartoons.
144	* RoaringRampageOfRescue: The main plot is Madame Souza's epic quest to rescue her grandson.
145	* RunningGag: Bruno's hatred of trains, after Champion's model train ran over his tail.
146	* SameSexTriplets: The titular Triplets, who are all female.
147	* ScreamsLikeALittleGirl: When separated from their bodyguards, the Mafia dons have actual baby cries dubbed in.
148	* SecondaryCharacterTitle: The Triplets are not the main protagonists of the film -- they eventually feature largely, but Souza and Bruno are the main characters the story follows. The Triplets appear during the opening musical number, but don't show up again until the second half of the movie.
149	* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: The mafia goons know to clear out of the way when a grenade gets close, [[spoiler:even if it means abandoning their bosses to their fate]]. {{Subverted}}, in that they all come back for the finale, however.
150	* ShoutOut:
151	** The Triplets watch ''Film/JourDeFete'' by Creator/JacquesTati on TV. There's also a poster for ''Film/MrHulotsHoliday'' on their wall. Director Sylvain Chomet would later direct ''WesternAnimation/{{The Illusionist\|2010}}'', based on an unfinished script by Tati.
152	** The Triplets also have a poster for ''WesternAnimation/GertieTheDinosaur'' in their apartment.
153	** The guitar player in the opening number is clearly Music/DjangoReinhardt, the tap dancer Creator/FredAstaire, the woman in the banana skirt Creator/JosephineBaker, and the conductor looks like a cross between Charles Trenet and [[Creator/TheMarxBrothers Harpo Marx]].
154	** And the poster is a shout-out to this artwork from the classic French SciFi about a team of racing cyclists: [[http://thenonist.com/images/uploads/mchnsmo10.full.jpg]]
155	** A subtle shout-out would be the song "Atilla Marcel", which is titled after a comic by Chomet.
156	** The gendarme from ''WesternAnimation/TheOldLadyAndThePigeons'' at the scene of the accordionist's accident.
157	* ShowWithinAShow: The opening short, "Belleville Rendez-vous", is an old-fashioned black-and-white scat song number [[spoiler:and, at the end, apparently the entire movie was a movie being watched by a much older Champion]].
158	* SmokestackDrop: The BigBad is run off a bridge by an [[ItMakesSenseInContext orthopedic shoe]] and falls straight into the chimney stack of a passing cruise liner.
159	* TheStinger: That guy that rents paddleboats is seen at the end of the movie, after the credits, still waiting for his paddle boat to be returned.
160	* TheStoic: Madame Souza reacts to everything with the same silent stare, and keeps her wits about her during incredibly tense situations. Champion is the same way; stoically continuing to pedal his bike even after he's abducted and enslaved by the mafia.
161	* TakeThat:
162	** The scene which shows the run-down apartment house where the Triplets have to live also shows for a few seconds a toilet clearly not flushed; the feces form the famous Mickey Mouse head.
163	** When Souza and the Triplets are looking through the pictures in the mechanic's wallet, one is of him standing with a Disneyland-esque character and he's holding a lollipop that reads "sucker".
164	* ThereIsOnlyOneBed: The Triplets all sleep in one bed, while, when she comes to stay with them for the time being, Mme. Souza sleeps on their sofa.
165	* TimeSkip: From Champion getting the bike to training for the tour. Then one in the middle of the movie as blink-and-you'll-miss-it winter passes in Belleville. [[spoiler:Then from plot resolution to the end.]]
166	* TinyGuyHugeGirl: In the opening sequence, the audience consists ''entirely'' of tiny men and their enormous wives. One poor fellow was apparently killed when his wife ''sat'' on him -- and she has yet to notice (or care?) that there's a corpse stuck to her backside.
167	%%* TopHeavyGuy: [[InvertedTrope Inverted]]. Champion and the other cyclists all have massive legs and gangly upper bodies.
168	* TrainingFromHell: Souza is a quite tough trainer when giving Champion biking lessons, making him bike even in the rain. This comes in handy later, when Mme Souza, the Triplets, Bruno, and the bikers escape from the mafia, as he goes faster when he hears her whistle.
169	* TrashCanBand: The Triplets, in their old age, have become a ''professional'' trash can band, performing at what appears to be a pretty swanky restaurant using a newspaper, refrigerator trays, and a vacuum cleaner. Souza joins them playing on her grandson's bike wheel.
170	* UnconventionalVehicleChase: The climax features Madame Souza, Champion, the Triplets, and Bruno trying to flee from an armada of cars... with only a bicycle simulator as their escape vehicle.
171	* UnusuallyUninterestingSight: During the opening vaudeville act, the Triplets witness one of their accompanying acts get mobbed by lustful fans and another get ''eaten by his dance shoes'', yet continue acting as though this were AllPartOfTheShow.
172	* VisualPun: The maître d of the cafe has an incredibly flexible upper body, and is practically folded in half as the mobsters come in. He's a ''spineless'' man who ''bends over backwards'' to please the mob.
173	* WhatHappenedToTheMouse:
174	** What happened to that mechanic? He was knocked unconscious and stuffed into a chest. He was never seen again.
175	** Also, the driver from the Tour de France disappears after arriving at the docks.
176	* {{White Dwarf Starlet}}s: The Triplets, but in a subversion, they don't care -- in fact, they're just as happy as when they were rich and famous.
177	* WorfHadTheFlu: Champion eventually tires out and gets off his bike while racing in the Tour de France, allowing the mafia to capture him, but it's implied the only reason this occurred was because his grandmother wasn't around to continue blowing her training whistle behind him, which had developed a Pavlovian link with his cycling skills over the course of his TrainingFromHell. Notably, he simply gets off his bike and walks into the back of the mobsters' van when he gives up (compared to the other two kidnapped racers who collapsed on the side of the road from exhaustion and were carried in against their will), and is later shown to [[spoiler:have the strength and stamina to easily move an entire stage carrying several people while cycling during the climax so long as Madame Souza is blowing her whistle.]]
178	* WunzaPlot: One is an old Portuguese-French woman with an obese dog searching for her grandson. The other are a group of old former vaudeville artists. Together, they will destroy the French mafia.

Context WesternAnimation / TheTripletsofBelleville