The French dispatch

Are you ready? Sit back in your seat, wait for the lights to go out, and let it all hang out: Wes Anderson is in charge. In this, his tenth feature film, your master filmmaker offers you a sketch film that pays tribute to an endangered species: old-time journalism. And the icing on the cake is French culture. For starters, a hint of artistic avant-garde, May '68 as a main course and gastronomy as a dessert. 

The ingredients concocted by Anderson will no longer surprise regular viewers: his frozen and melancholic characters, his axial geometric shots bordering on obsession, his colorful palette and the nostalgia of the passing of time. We are now in familiar territory. Too familiar? For some, no doubt, and yet the sauce that the filmmaker adds to this tenth opus does not, in my opinion, have a taste of déjà vu. On the contrary, The French Dispatch is distinguished by a crazy freedom.

Alternating color and black and white with an almost perfect sense of timing, forsaking live action for an epic animation sequence, allowing himself literary digressions for the sake of it... Wes Anderson seems to be fearless. In an industry often criticized for its lack of creativity, Wes Anderson's filmography is a breath of fresh air. He elegantly proves that movie dreams are still possible, without ever, oh never, underestimating the intelligence of the audience. 

Underneath this cascade of inventiveness, The French Dispatch takes a slight step aside. By dint of enclosing its characters in a kind of existentialist nonchalance, emotion sometimes has difficulty in fully piercing the screen. But as a high-flying cast gives life to this pretty little illustrated theater (Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Matthieu Amalric, Benicio Del Toro, Lyna Khoudri...), it's hard not to forgive them everything. The subtleties of the stories will be diluted in our memories, but the incredible poetry of the whole will remain long-lived.

The French Dispatch
Written and directed by Wes Anderson
Story by Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Hugo Guinness, Jason Schwartzman
Produced by Wes Anderson, Jeremy Dawson, Steven Rales
Starring Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Edward Norton, Jeffrey Wright, Benicio Del Toro, Lyna Khoudri and Angelica Houston
Cinematography : Robert Yeoman
Edited by Andrew Weisblum
Music by Alexandre Desplat
Production companies : Indian Paintbrush, American Empirical Pictures
Distributed by Searchlight Pictures (United States), The Walt Disney Company France (France),
Release date : July 12, 2021 (Cannes), October 22, 2021 (United States), October 5, 2021 (France)
Running time : 103 minutes

Seen on September 30, 2021 at Publicis Champs-Élysées

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