The French Dis­patch – first-look review

Any­one who is famil­iar with LWLies knows we’re pret­ty big fans of Wes Ander­son; his tenth fea­ture seemed tai­lor-made to appeal to movie lovers who also appre­ci­ate the art of print jour­nal­ism. Con­cern­ing the French for­eign bureau of the fic­tion­al Lib­er­ty Kansas Evening Sun news­pa­per, the film fol­lows three sep­a­rate sto­ry­lines gath­ered togeth­er with­in the The French Dispatch’s final issue, to be released upon the pass­ing of its founder and edi­tor-in-chief, Arthur How­itzer Jr (Bill Murray). 

These dis­patch­es take the form of a trav­el­ogue filed by cycling enthu­si­ast Herb­saint Sav­er­ac (Owen Wil­son), an arts report from JKL Berensen (Til­da Swin­ton), a polit­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tion by Lucin­da Kre­mentz (Frances McDor­mand) and a food col­umn writ­ten by Roe­buck Wright (Jef­frey Wright), book­end­ed by a pro­logue and epi­logue con­cern­ing the paper’s past and present. 

These sto­ries are depict­ed in typ­i­cal Ander­son fash­ion: Berensen deliv­ers a sym­po­sium about the incar­cer­at­ed artist Moses Rosen­thaler (Beni­cio del Toro) and his muse, prison guard Simone (Lea Sey­doux); Kre­mentz reports on stu­dent rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies Zef­firelli B (Tim­o­th­ee Cha­la­met) and Juli­ette (Lyna Khoudri). Per­haps the most mov­ing of the seg­ments is the final one, in which Wright’s gay reporter reflects on an encounter with the famed police chef Lt Nescafi­er (Stephen Park). 

Ander­son has point­ed to The New York­er as his grand inspi­ra­tion, and this shines through with plen­ty of ref­er­ences with­out ever feel­ing too insu­lar or alien­at­ing to those with less affin­i­ty for the pub­li­ca­tion. The film man­ages to por­tray the stri­dent spir­it of the mag­a­zine, with the kind of smart, intri­cate dia­logue we’ve come to expect from Ander­son inter­laced with mem­o­rable plot­lines that wouldn’t feel out of place in a high­brow peri­od­i­cal. A car­toon sequence is a par­tic­u­lar­ly love­ly touch, rem­i­nis­cent of The New Yorker’s elab­o­rate illus­trat­ed covers.

The French Dis­patch is Anderson’s most impres­sion­is­tic and unusu­al film in quite some time, not to men­tion his most ambi­tious since his stop-motion adap­ta­tion of Fan­tas­tic Mr Fox. The sprawl­ing cast list might have once looked intim­i­dat­ing, but they flit in and out adding colour and life to the head­lines. So even though many A‑listers only get a line or two, Wes fans will delight in pick­ing out faces they recognise. 

This is also arguably the director’s his most detail-ori­ent­ed work; the run­time flies by as we become immersed in the metic­u­lous­ly con­struct­ed world. Ander­son isn’t just a film­mak­er, he’s an archi­tect, craft­ing intri­cate worlds for view­ers to get lost in. This one requires a lit­tle con­cen­tra­tion to fol­low all the dia­logue and sto­ry­lines, but it’s a plea­sure to be in the hands of a sto­ry­teller who cares so deeply about every aspect of his work.

The French Dis­patch might feel less acces­si­ble to some – famil­iar­i­ty with Anderson’s quirks (the fast-paced ver­bosi­ty of his dia­logue, on-screen title after on-screen title), not to men­tion pri­or knowl­edge of the source mate­r­i­al, will go a long way to mak­ing sense of things. But still, this is the Wes we know and love, with his art­ful con­sid­er­a­tions of love, lib­er­ty and what lives on after we die. Like any print clas­sic, it begs to be leafed over again and again so that new details emerge; there’s even a ded­i­ca­tion list of writ­ers at the end, which might inspire an uptake in archive issues of The New Yorker.

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