Certification. 15
Running Time. 1 hour 47 mins
Director. Wes Anderson
Cast. Mathieu Amalric, Bob Balaban, Adrien Brody, Timothée Chalamet, Willem Dafoe, Benicio Del Toro, Lyna Khoudri, Frances McDormand, Elisabeth Moss, Bill Murray, Edward Norton, Stephen Park, Saoirse Ronan, Liev Schreiber, Jason Schwartzman, Léa Seydoux, Tilda Swinton, Christoph Waltz, Owen Wilson, Henry Winkler, Jeffrey Wright.
Rating. 31%
In the run up to the release of Wes Anderson's latest film, Asteroid City, The Glasgow Film Theatre have screened a Cinemasters season, featuring all ten of the director's previous feature length films. I attended a couple of the screenings - The Royal Tenenbaums and The French Dispatch. The latter is Wes Anderson's wistful love letter to hallowed publications like The New Yorker and The Paris Review, which honour the finest journalistic tradition of opening a small window into the lives of others - and doing it concisely, too, within a limited word count and steadfast deadline.
As ever, the scene is set through a charming and loquacious narrative,
"Over the next ten years, he [Arthur Howitzer Jr] assembled a team of the best expatriate journalists of his time and transformed Picnic into The French Dispatch, a factual weekly report on the subject of world politics, the arts (high and low), fashion, fancy cuisine, fine drink, and diverse stories of human interests set in faraway quartiers.
He brought the world to Kansas.
His writers line the spines of every good American library - Berensen, Sazerac, Krementz, Roebuck Wright.
One reporter known as the best living writer in quality of sentences per minute.
One who never completed a single article, but haunted the halls cheerily for three decades.
One privately blind writer who wrote keenly through the eyes of others."
When I reflect on the reasons why I enjoy a Wes Anderson film, I immediately think of the director's sublime use of colour, the definitive and distinctive cinematography, the idiosyncratic characters, the wonderful dialogue (with flawless comedic timing) and the chemistry between his ever-expanding troop of actors. All these ingredients are present in The French Dispatch, but ultimately like most cinema, it is the story that matters. The most endearing Wes Anderson films - The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox or The Grand Budapest Hotel - are, unsurprisingly, the films with the most delightful and engaging stories. The one element The French Dispatch is sadly lacking.
The French Dispatch consists of a milieu of articles [a brief travel-guide prologue, three feature articles and an obituary] that take place in the journalistic outpost of the fictional French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé. The problem with the magazine-style anthology structure - the film is constructed of three discrete stories, each based on a feature article by one of the magazine's star writers: J. K. L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton), Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) and Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) - is that the film is almost inevitably uneven. A film defined by its inconsistencies. And however entertaining the film's final feature is - the most engaging by far; a food review turned kidnapping narrated by and starring the most mellifluous and erudite Jeffrey Wright - my patience was tested by the features that preceded it.
For the first time I found a Wes Anderson film interminable and exasperating. Whilst ambitious, a film ultimately less than the sum of its parts. An amuse-bouche, hors d'oeuvre or delectable French macaron consumed by one of Wes Anderson's most ostentatious characters; aesthetically pleasing, easily digestible but superficial and without the hearty substance of a satisfying meal.
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