A Wes Anderson fan's review
This was my first time back in a cinema since December 2019. And a good way to re-commence with the newest film by one of my favorite directors, Wes Anderson.
Except, hold, I've been worried that he had gotten into a rut recently with movies like The Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs which came off too much like self-parody. The trailer for The French Dispatch (which was first seen in February. Not February of this year, but Feb 2020!) looked like more of the same, no matter how intriguing the imagery. "Wes, my man, you need to get away from your unique style for a bit; you're turning into a one-trick pony, do a hand-held vivid thriller or something."
Happily, although The French Dispatch proudly displays all the past "Wes World" trademarks (and actors), it has a very playful spirit - more lively than his recent ventures. All sorts of "gimmicks" to keep things amusing: unexpected switches from color to black-and-white to color again (at least one time in the same scene on a cut to a different angle), aspect ratio changes, split screens (sometimes with b&w on one side, color on the other), highly theatrical lighting (including a scene in which a young man's flashback is seen as a future staged play), a poetic floating motorcycle ride between two new young lovers, an animation sequence out of nowhere, clever only-as-a-movie storytelling devices. Maybe Wes isn't going to change his style, but The French Dispatch shows how he can enhance and energize it.
So what's it about? "The French Dispatch" itself is a New Yorker-style supplement for Americans filled with offbeat tales of the French village of Ennui-sure-Blase. (Whimsy lives in Wes World! - one of the biggest chuckles is what is seen directly outside an art museum in Kansas) - we see the dramatizations of three of the stories, plus extra bits, all told with dazzling ingenuity.
A big cast, so some actors like Griffin Dunne, Willem Dafoe, Christoph Waltz and Bob Balaban get a bit lost in the shuffle, but others shine: Jeffrey Wright as one of the writers, Tilda Swinton masterful as another one of the writers putting on airs at a lecture, Benicio del Toro and Lea Seydoux as the most unlikeliest artist and muse, Adrien Brody as a scheming art dealer, heck I even liked Timothee Chalamet as a young firebrand. His paramour, the helmet and skirt-wearing Lyna Khoudri, is my new crush.
The music is terrific all throughout, changing tone with each new tale. I'll have to get a closer examination of who did what (was that a new Desplat theme or an older composition from the fifties?) at a later time.
Frustratingly, I heard at least one person after the showing complain about lack of plot. Well, first of all, a simply plotted movie is not what this is about, second, there was plenty of plot in all of the individual stories, and lastly, why not let the delight of the film fill that hole where you expected a standard plot?