An ani­mat­ed music video from The French Dis­patch revives a pop classic

Say what you will about Wes Ander­son, but there’s no deny­ing that he’s got an eye for detail. The the­atri­cal release of his lat­est film The French Dis­patch is fast approach­ing, and for him, a nor­mal pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign sim­ply won’t do; he’d rather re-record an obscure gem of Euro-pop with a leg­end of mod­ern alter­na­tive music, and set it all in a metic­u­lous­ly assem­bled car­toon world.

In a new music video released today, Jarvis Cock­er croons out his own take on ​‘Aline’, the ​’60s love anthem from singer-song­writer Christophe. You may have pre­vi­ous­ly heard the song fea­tured promi­nent­ly in the film’s trail­er, or when Cock­er first released this record­ing as a sin­gle last week.

That release came pack­aged with the announce­ment that Cock­er had assem­bled a full album of cov­ers in coop­er­a­tion with Ander­son to accom­pa­ny the new film, the singer offer­ing his take on cuts from Françoise Hardy, Serge Gains­bourg, Brigitte Bar­dot, and oth­ers from the ye-ye pop scene in France. It’s not the first time the musi­cian and film­mak­er have joined forces, either, Jarvis hav­ing already appeared on the sound­track for The Fan­tas­tic Mr Fox.

In the video, Cocker’s char­ac­ter Tip-Top makes his way through the fic­ti­tious set­ting of Ennui-sur-Blasé and pass­es by ani­mat­ed like­ness­es of the mas­sive ensem­ble cast, includ­ing writ­ers JKL Berensen (Til­da Swin­ton), Lucin­da Kre­mentz (Frances McDor­mand), and Roe­buck Wright (Jef­frey Wright). They’re all on staff at the mag­a­zine that lends the film its title, a mock­up of the New York­er made clear through the hand-drawn style cribbed from the vin­tage cov­ers of the real-life publication.

In her review of the film, our duti­ful Cannes reporter Han­nah Strong was pos­i­tive about ​“Anderson’s most impres­sion­is­tic and unusu­al film in quite some time.” She wrote that ​“this is the Wes we know and love, with his art­ful con­sid­er­a­tions of love, lib­er­ty and what lives on after we die.” The fans know who they are by this point, and this new link-up between Ander­son and Cock­er has giv­en them plen­ty to look for­ward to.

The French Dis­patch comes to cin­e­mas in the UK and US on 22 Octo­ber, the same day that Cocker’s album hits shelves.