“The French Dispatch” - Film Review
Watching a Wes Anderson movie is a feast for the eyes. Few directors have such a distinct visual language. When you are watching a Wes Anderson movie, the audience knows it’s a Wes Anderson movie. The French Dispatch is no different. It is a series of vignettes from the fictional French foreign bureau of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun’s last issue following the death of its editor, Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray). Each scene is an extraordinarily detailed still life painting that welcomes the audience to the dreamy French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé. It’s what the world would look like if we were all wearing rose-colored glasses.
In total, there are four vignettes. The first, a bicycle ride through the French town, is narrated by Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson) and gives the audience the opportunity to become familiar with the land where the next three stories will take place. The second, The Concrete Masterpiece, is about Moses Rosenthaler (Benecio del Toro), an incarcerated artist, and his prison guard muse, Simone (Léa Seydoux). The third, Revisions to a Manifesto, features a student uprising led by Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet) and covered for the paper by journalist Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand). Lastly, The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner is a tale about food journalist Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright), who is having the dinner of his life with acclaimed chef Nescaffier (Stephen Park), only to be interrupted by an attempted kidnapping.
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Anderson excels in creating eccentric characters, and The French Dispatch is chock full of them. Some individuals only appear for a moment, like Wally Wolodarsky’s Cheery Writer, a writer for the newspaper who has never finished an article, and Elisabeth Moss’ Alumna. There is no shortage of joy in these performances, and the audience feels it. Even when parts of the vignettes aren’t as gripping, the sincere joy of the actors comes through. That is in part thanks to Anderson’s script, a clear labor of love and a celebration of the written word.
Of the vignettes, The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner is the most compelling. Jeffrey Wright is a strong narrator with a lovely cadence to his storytelling, and the single-take walk-through of the police station is a feat of technical beauty. In an otherwise mostly black-and-white vignette, the single shot of Saoirse Ronan’s big, blue eyes in stunning technicolor is a showstopper.
At times overwhelming in scope, but never unwelcome, The French Dispatch is what the audience has come to expect from an Anderson movie, but it doesn’t go too far beyond that. It is a perfectly curated dollhouse of eccentricity in a candy-coated wonderland, and there are far worse ways for viewers to spend their time.
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