The French Dispatch, a caustic chronicle on France by Wes Anderson

Picture of the movie The French Dispatch © 2021 20th Century Studios and TFD Productions LLC

 

Initially selected in 2020, The French Dispatch will at last be presented In Competition for this 74th edition of the Festival de Cannes. In his unique and inimitable style, director Wes Anderson’s new project is a series of accounts of the lives of a number of French personalities of the twentieth century, as recounted by an American journalist.

For his tenth feature film, the director of Moonrise Kingdom, selected In Competition in 2012, turns his attention to France. The story, a series of chapters – as is often the case with this filmmaker – takes place in a fictional city in France called Ennui-sur-Blasé (a word play meaning “boredom in blasé”) where the American magazine The French Dispatch, ironically defined in the film as“a weekly analysis of international politics, the arts (fine or not), and other random bits of news” has been relocated.

In this collection of historic anecdotes that we page through in pastel colours and black and white, Wes Anderson delights us with a prestigious international cast, composed of Benicio del Toro, Frances McDormand, Jeffrey Wright, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Timothée Chalamet, Léa Seydoux, Owen Wilson, Mathieu Amalric, Lyna Khoudri, Stephen Park, Elisabeth Moss, Guillaume Gallienne, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Saoirse Ronan, Christoph Waltz, Cécile de France, Denis Ménochet, Vincent Macaigne… They all work around the iconic Bill Murray, in the role of editor-in-chief of the magazine.

A slapstick chronicle of France in the years 1950 to 1970, filmed in Angoulême, The French Dispatch takes us once again into the director’s imagination, with its symmetric and retro aesthetic, enhanced by sets created by Adam Stockhausen, costumes by Milena Canonero, and music by Alexandre Desplat.