A Kansas newspaper has an office in a French city. An extravagant newspaper offshoot is produced there. Wes Anderson brought many international stars in front of the camera for the film.
Berlin – The American filmmaker Wes Anderson is the creator of cinematic strokes of genius such as “Grand Budapest Hotel” and “The fantastic Mr. Fox”. With his colorful, detailed pictures and his weird humor, he has developed his very own cinema style.
Now he is bringing a magazine to the big screen with his new film: “The French Dispatch” is structured like the title issue. The episode film with prominent cast, some of which was shot in the Babelsberg studio, is a loving homage to classic print journalism.
In the fictional French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé (in German: boredom over indifference), Kansas-born Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray) founded a foreign office for the newspaper “Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun”. This is where the supplement is produced and printed, in which the authors share their view of art, culture, politics and society in France.
But Howitzer is dead now. And in his will he has decreed that “The French Dispatch Of The Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun” – its full title – should be discontinued. His grieving employees, who, according to Howitzer’s orders, are not allowed to cry in the office, remember them in retrospect.
It begins with a short, amusing travelogue by the cycling reporter Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson), wonderfully staged in the typical Anderson style with symmetrical, sometimes almost static images in old-fashioned colors. The film alternates between color and black and white, different formats and even cartoon scenes.
“Wes is a real poet,” enthused Léa Seydoux in an interview with the German press agency. “He’s a free spirit who has created his own language.” Seydoux, who plays the female lead in the James Bond thriller “No Time to Die”, can be seen in one of three longer stories, the one in France in the 1960s play and form the core of “The French Dispatch”.
Tilda Swinton excels as an affected art expert who reports on a painter (Benicio Del Toro) in prison. Behind bars, his guard (Seydoux) poses as a nude model for him. In the political section, Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) writes about a student revolt and its leader Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet).
The third story is multifaceted but a little too long about a journalist (brilliant: Jeffrey Wright) who remembers in a talk show how he wanted to write about a celebrity chef and police superintendent (Steve Park), but then got involved in a wild crime story, Mathieu Amalric, Saoirse Ronan, Edward Norton and Willem Dafoe also participate. Nevertheless, it remains culinary.
The obituary for Howitzer concludes. “The French Dispatch” was inspired by the famous US magazine “The New Yorker”. Its editor, Harold Moss, was the blueprint for Murray’s character. Wes Anderson’s film is full of detail and innuendo that delight the eyes and the mind. You are amazed at the grandiose pictures, laugh at the weird humor and enjoy the wonderful performances of the many stars, some of whom are in top form. Charming cinema fun.
The French Dispatch, USA / France / Germany 2021, 108 min., FSK 12, by Wes Anderson, with Bill Murray, Léa Seydoux, Jeffrey Wright, Timothée Chalamet, Frances McDormand dpa
