A new exhi­bi­tion opens a win­dow into Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch

The films of Wes Ander­son, with their pleas­ing sym­met­ri­cal designs and cozi­ly clut­tered aes­thet­ics, inspire a degree of wide­spread fan­dom that few direc­tors’ fil­mo­gra­phies can boast. Fans who wish they could be whisked away into Wes World may be inter­est­ed to learn about a new exhi­bi­tion com­ing to Lon­don next month.

180 Stu­dios have announced plans for an upcom­ing event at their space on The Strand, with a host of props, sets and cos­tumes used in Anderson’s lat­est film, The French Dis­patch. They rolled out a sim­i­lar attrac­tion when Isle of Dogs opened in 2018, and now they’re invit­ing the gen­er­al pub­lic to slip into anoth­er metic­u­lous­ly-craft­ed vision of a fic­tion­alised for­eign land.

Vis­i­tors will be treat­ed to ​“minia­ture dio­ra­mas and large-scale oil paint­ings” that appear in the anthol­o­gy film about jour­nal­ists in ​’60s France, along with the thought­ful cou­ture that always pops up in Anderson’s pro­duc­tions. After drink­ing in the mem­o­ra­bil­ia, vis­i­tors can refresh them­selves with a bite at Le Sans Blague, a Parisian-style café serv­ing the appro­pri­ate cuisine.

While the press release doesn’t go into specifics on which items tick­et-buy­ers can expect to see, a famil­iar­i­ty with the film invites some ideas: the bicy­cle used by Owen Wil­son as cycling reporter Herb­saint Saz­er­ac (Owen Wil­son), the provoca­tive art­works of impris­oned painter Moses Rosen­thaler (Beni­cio del Toro), and the pied-à-terre where Lucin­da Kre­mentz (Frances McDor­mand) watch­es stu­dent rev­o­lu­tion­ary Zef­firelli (Tim­o­th­ée Cha­la­met) bathe could all very well appear in the flesh, so to speak.

The exhi­bi­tion runs for one month from 14 Octo­ber to 14 Novem­ber and tick­ets go on sale 26 Sep­tem­ber at 180thes​trand​.com