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Two Major Directors’ Latest: Wes Anderson Wallows in Whimsy; Ridley Scott Crafts a “Woke” Epic by Mike Canning
From “The French Dispatch”: facade of the publishing house of the expatriate journal. Photo: Searchlight Pictures
“The French Dispatch”
From director Wes Anderson comes his 10th feature, “The French Dispatch,” which he has described as “a love letter to journalists set at an outpost of an American newspaper in the fictional 20th-century French city of Ennui-sur-Blase.” The film is inspired by Anderson’s love of The New Yorker with characters and events based on real-life equivalents from the magazine. It is also a “portmanteau” film, an anthology of three distinct stories that appeared in the Dispatch, written by its idiosyncratic expatriate staff. (Rated R, the film runs 103 minutes.) Bill Murray, a long-time favorite of Anderson’s (he has appeared in all of the director’s films), plays the Dispatch’s editor, Arthur Howitzer Jr., a softspoken curmudgeon, whose eclectic staff includes travel writer Herbert Sazerac (Owen Wilson), copyeditor Alumna (Elizabeth Moss) and magazine cartoonist Hermes Jones ( Jason Schwartzman). The first of the three stories (“The Concrete Masterpiece”) centers on Julien Cadazio (Adrien Brody), a fervent art dealer interested in the work of a violent prison inmate, Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro) housed in the section for the criminally insane. This piece is based on a New
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ric), Wright and others learn that his son Gigi has Yorker series covering the real-life been kidnapped, and Lt. Nescaffier (a noted chef as art dealer Lord Duveen and is narwell as a police officer) is on the case. Edward Norrated by Dispatch writer J.K.L. Beton (a chauffeur) and Saorise Ronan (a showgirl) rensen (Tilda Swinton). French star are part of the kidnapping gang who are chased by Lea Seydoux plays Rosenthaler’s the police and eventually succumb in a shootout. prison guard, Simone, who serves Let it be known that “French Dispatch” could be as his muse, posing for him nude, none other than a Wes Anderson film. All the elewhich he envisions as an abstract ments of his style are there. The highly stylized jewel impressionistic jumble, an image box scenes, the deadpan dialogue, the occasional anithat captures Cadazio. The convict mation, the ever-present whimsy and preciousness ‒ follows up with an expansive series all on full display for this mellow comedy (the film is of similar frescos. especially reminiscent of “Grand Hotel Budapest”). The second tale takes off from However, for this observer, they miss the mark. They the May 1968 student occupation seem like Wes gone amok. protests and was inspired by New The best of the tales is “Masterpiece,” principally Yorker articles originally written by because the setup is distinctive and unexpected, and Mavis Gallant. Called “Revisions to a Manifesto” in the deadpan delivery works best (del Toro and Brody the film, it is written by staffer Lucinda Krementz seem comfortable in their stilted dialogue). It is the (Frances McDormand), a no-nonsense journalleast cloying of the three, with a semi-clever take ist profiling student revolutionaries, who include on contemporary art. The “Manifesto” sequence is a chess-playing Zeffirelli (Timothee Chalamet) and his obdurate girlfriend Juliette (Lyna Khoudri). Zeffirelli is the poetic voice of the “revolution,” while his Juliette is the enforcer. The third article, “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner,” is written by Roebuck Wright ( Jeffery Wright), a food journalist at the Dispatch. At a dinner with the poMatt Damon (left) as Jean de Carrouges and Adam Driver as lice commissioner Jacques Le Gris in “The Last Duel.” Photo: Patrick Redmond. © 2021 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved (Mathieu Amal-
