This offbeat French film lost out to Finding Nemo for the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2003. I love Nemo and friends as much as the next person, but in this case, I can’t help feeling the Academy got it wrong. Finding Nemo is a fantastic kids’ movie. Belleville Rendez-Vous is a work of art. Sylvain Chomet’s feature-length debut is a gentle reminder of the power of hand-drawn animation, and its innovative visual style is perfect for a story that, despite its strangeness, is built on deceptively simple and sweet foundations.

The King’s Art Room, in all its ramshackle charm, was a great intimate venue for a film that celebrates the unassuming. The hero of the piece is Madame Souza, a stoic old lady who sets out to find her grandson Champion, a Tour de France cyclist kidnapped and taken to America by sinister French gangsters. Along the way, she falls in with the Triplets of Belleville, once famous singers, now living in a cockroach-ridden apartment and subsisting entirely on a diet of frogs. There is practically no dialogue, but the plot is never difficult to follow – in fact, the use of music and the brilliantly funny physicality of the characters make the action clearer than many films full of exposition. Character design is the film’s strongest feature, from Madame Souza’s enormous orthopaedic shoe to my personal favourite, the obsequious waiter who literally bends over backwards to please the evil mob boss who comes into his restaurant. There are also some great visual gags, including a rather peculiar solution to a flat tyre involving an obese dog and a toffee

The word eccentric doesn’t even begin to do Belleville Rendez-Vous justice – not only because the world it creates is far stranger than that implies, but also thanks to the charisma that makes you feel instantly at home with its grotesquery. Merci beaucoup for the screening, King’s – a welcome break from the woes of exam term.