A One Mann’s Movies review of “The French Dispatch” (2021).
(Full title “The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun“).
As another viewing on my recent trans-Atlantic plane ride, I caught up with Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch”: a movie I managed to miss due to one of my (many!) Covid infections. All of the scenes in the film are (obviously!) very “Wes Anderson-ish”. But, for me, the movie as a whole just doesn’t quite work overall.
Bob the Movie Man Rating(s):
Plot Summary:
The “French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun” is a magazine covering the goings on in the fictional French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé. But the editor Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray) has died of a sudden heart attack. And at his express wish, this will be the last issue. We visually explore the four varied articles, together with an obituary for Howitzer, that comprise this final edition.
Certification:
Talent:
Starring: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Benicio del Toro, Léa Seydoux, Adam Brody, Tilda Swinton, Bob Balaban, Henry Winkler, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Christophe Waltz, Jeffrey Wright, Liev Schreiber, Mathieu Almaric, Willem Dafoe, Saoirse Ronan, Elisabeth Moss.
Directed by: Wes Anderson.
Written by: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola & Hugo Guinness.
Twitter Handles: #french_dispatch, #thefrenchdispatch.
“The French Dispatch” Review:
Positives:
- This is a really difficult movie to review. I’d really like to love it. And if you gave me just about ANY ten minute segment of the film to review separately, I might be reaching for my 4* or even, in some cases, 5* rating.
- The set designs are superb and the cinematography (by Anderson regular Robert Yeoman) is vivid and memorable. Stills from this movie could grace any art gallery around the world.
- The production design is exquisite, and it’s disappointing it didn’t get an Oscar nomination. There’s a phenomenal attention to detail in there. Just look at the picture I included of Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro) and Simone (Léa Seydoux) in bed… the sheets are inked with “Prison/Asylum Ennui”.
- The tongue-in-cheek comedy is terrific, with multiple laugh-out-loud moments. This is both in the form of exquisite visual gags but also in some of the dialogue. In trying to find the police commissioner’s dining room, Jeffrey Wright’s gastronaut Roebuck Wright intones “It was nigh impossible to locate. At least for this reporter. A weakness in cartography: the curse of the homosexual”. (LOL).
- The ensemble cast – and WOW!… what a cast – seem to be having an absolute blast. Jeffrey Wright’s Roebuck Wright, is particularly memorable as is the pairing of Frances McDormand and Timothée Chalamet as unlikely lovers caught up in the “Chessboard Revolution”. I also greatly enjoyed Lyna Khoudri’s performance as Chalamet’s moped riding co-revolutionary.
- Another Anderson regular, Alexandre Desplat, provides the quirky score.
Negatives:
- I laughed a lot in this film and found many of the scenes wildly entertaining. So why then is the whole soufflé not more satisfying? I think, for me, it was all just too rich. I found it to be like eating an insanely dense chocolate cake. One where you take 2 mouthfuls and decide “No, thanks, I’m done”. I even started asking myself, should I should turn the film off? No! That would be an insult to Mr Anderson! But having eaten the whole cake, as it were, I was left feeling just a a bit sick.
- Given the current drive for greater respect for women in the cinema, was it really necessary to show quite so much of Léa Seydoux? Emma Thompson did a full frontal in the recent (and excellent) Leo Grande. But that was fundamental to the story development. Here, Seydoux’s explicit nudity seems only to be provided for titillation and nothing more.
Summary Thoughts on “The French Dispatch”:
I really enjoyed Anderson’s “The Grand Budapest Hotel” from 2014. It had all the style and the comedy displayed here, but weaved into a coherent story. Unfortunately, for me, “The French Dispatch” is a rag-bag of disconnected episodes, all of varying degrees of bat-shit-craziness, but which never quite congeal into a satisfying movie experience.
Trailer for “The French Dispatch”
The trailer is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcPk2p0Zaw4 .
