THE FRENCH DISPATCH
★★★★ OUT 22 OCTOBER CERT TBC / 103 MINS
DIRECTOR Wes Anderson
CAST Benicio Del Toro, Léa Seydoux, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Frances Mcdormand
PLOT In Ennui-sur-blasé, the staff of high-end magazine ‘The French Dispatch’ are putting their final issue to bed. Alongside obituaries and travel, it features stories of artistic prisoners, revolutionary students and the role of fine dining in the kidnapping of a police commissioner’s son.
THE FRENCH DISPATCH is Wesley Wales Anderson (even his name sounds like one of his characters) with knobs on. A billet doux to literary magazines, a vanishing age of journalism, travel, France in general and French cinema in particular, it’s structured in a magazine format — an obituary, a travel section and three features — which gives it the feel of a portmanteau picture. This means it is slightly less fulfilling than some of Anderson’s narrative features, but this is still a director working near the peak of his powers, and an intricately constructed movie full of dense detail, comedic invention — both highbrow and low — fantastic flights of imagination, exquisitely controlled filmmaking and an infectious sense of fun.
The magazine in question is ‘The French Dispatch’, a satellite publication “of ‘The Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun’” (cue miniscule Andersonstyle type below the title). The opening obituary is for Arthur Howitzer Jr (Bill Murray), an oldschool editor with a “No Crying” sign above the door and useful journalistic advice (“Just try to make it sound like you wrote it that way on purpose”). We segue into a brief travel column as Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson) cycles round the fictional town of Ennui-sur-blasé offering insights into street corners and cats, split screens giving a poignant then-and-now perspective.
Then we are into the first feature proper. Relayed by Tilda Swinton’s art correspondent J.K.L. Berensen, ‘The Concrete Masterpiece’ tells the engaging tale of convicted murderer Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio Del Toro), who uses prison guard Simone (Léa Seydoux) as a nude model and muse, catching the eye of dealer Julien Cadazio (Adrien Brody). The middle (least satisfying) episode, ‘Revisions To A Manifesto’, mixes Godardian radicalism and Truffaut-style romance as essay writer Lucinda Krementz (Frances Mcdormand) begins an affair with student Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet) during the tumult of May 1968. And saving the best ’til last, ‘The Private Dining Room Of The Police Commissioner’ sees Jeffrey Wright’s food writer Roebuck Wright profiling genius chef Nescaffier (Stephen Park), who becomes embroiled in a kidnap plot involving a police commissioner’s (Mathieu Almaric) son, gangsters and an underworld accountant known as The Abacus (Willem Dafoe). It’s complicated but goofy fun.
Newcomers to the Anderson gang — Del Toro, Chalamet, Wright, Elisabeth Moss — tune into the wavelength as well as the regulars (hello, Jason Schwartzman). All your favourite Anderson tropes are here: symmetrical compositions, subtitles, aspect-ratio shenanigans, huge cross-sections (a plane) and a pastel palette to rival The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg. But there are some tweaks to the formula, too. The French Dispatch is the first Anderson flick to feature an animated car-chase that could have leapt straight off the pages of Tintin. It’s also a rare WA film that flirts with the real world, engaging with politics, sex and violence, often absent from his twee, hermetically sealed universes. The end-note is weirdly wistful, the whole thing a joy to flick through. Subscribe now. IAN FREER
VERDICT
The French Dispatch is a designedto-within-an-inch-of its-life delight. If it lacks a compelling story, only one filmmaker could have made this film. And, in these cookie-cutterdirector days, it’s a vision to be cherished.