As we announced back in March, a 2-disc Special Edition of Sylvain Chomet’s Les Triplettes de Belleville has in fact been released recently in Canada – the only question is, “was it worth the wait?” Apart from some deluxe packaging and the inclusion of the original French track, it seems the release still does not feature any of the French DVD’s bonus features (a 38 minute documentary, making the music video featurette and a number of stills and trailers), settling instead for what is on offer on Sony’s US version of the film. Also intriguing is that the running time is listed at 77 minutes, which would indicate a PAL transfer from the original 81 minute film, thus speeding up the film and audio pitch.

Follow this link to look at the package and the specs, plus a comparison between the two issues:

Canadian edition box art

Canadian 2-disc Edition Specs:

Disc One:
Film 1.78:1 (77 minutes)
Dolby 5.1 French, Dolby French Surround 2.0
Dolby 5.1 English, Dolby English Surround 2.0

Disc Two:
Three Selected Scenes with Commentary
Cartoon According To Sylvain Chomet featurette
Making Of featurette
Belleville Rendez-vous Music Video

Original French 2-disc Specs (with same packaging):

Disc One:
Film 1.66:1 (80 minutes) – widescreen and full-frame
French Dolby Digital 5.1, French 2.0 Surround (uncompressed PCM)
Belleville Rendez-vous Music Video
Theatrical Trailer

Disc Two:
Documentary on the future of animation (38 min)
Making Of featurette (6 min, produced for TV)
Cartoon According To Sylvain Chomet featurette
Making of the Belleville Rendez-vous music video
Three Selected Scenes with Commentary
The Triplettes as seen by… featurette
Teaser trailer
Stills gallery
DVD-ROM content

FINAL TALLY:

So, we finally have the rumored 2-disc Canadian edition, though it doesn’t quite stack up as hoped. For those with multi-region playback (and remember that all PC drives will play back PAL discs on a computer monitor), the recommended edition would have to be the French original. Not only does it feature its native audio track and the same packaging as the Canadian release (sans, of course, the bilingual English translated text), but a number of more and in depth extras.

The Canadian version, at the end of all of this, seems little more than the US edition spread over two discs, with English (dropping the US’s Spanish mix) and the added, original French soundtrack on disc one, and the American extras (a grand total of 35-40 minutes max) on disc two. That it also seems to sport a PAL transfer to NTSC (rather than Sony’s new, high-definition native film transfer) also indicates that the French/PAL original would feature a stronger, less filtered picture. If you can speak French (for the extras), it would seem that the French 2-disc set would offer more overall value.

Les Triplettes de Belleville: Canadian 2-disc – PAL transferred to NTSC (77m), US extras, French soundtrack and packaging similar to the French 2-disc.

Les Triplettes de Belleville: French 2-disc – Native PAL transfer (80m), many more and different extras, French soundtrack, original packaging same as the Canadian release. See here for review.

Finally, there seems to be some word that some versions of the Canadian 2-disc comes in the standard-looking American-styled case. This has not yet been confirmed, and it does seem this could be getting confused with a possible single-disc Canadian edition which followed the American release. Just be aware that there could be dual packaging options out there, but the edition shown above DOES exist!

Thanks to Rand Cyrenne, Anne Simon, George A. Cepeda, Shafin, Michael Somebody and Silent Bob at DVD File for information, translations and pictures.