THE FRENCH DISPATCH — Fruitcake Enterprises

Directing: A-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

The anthology film as a genre has a storied history—and a varied one as well, which often applies to the several stories within the one film as well. And so it goes with The Fench Dispatch, Wes Anderson’s first foray into the genre, although one could argue that “Wes Anderson” is a genre unto itself, all aesthetics and dioramas, and that element remains at the forefront.

This is Anderson’s ninth feature film as director since his debut with Bottle Rocket in 1996, and in many regards, The French Dispatch is a return to form—in that it’s far more concerned with the exactness of screen presentation than it is with, say, character development. His last film, The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), was entertaining enough to render it Anderson’s greatest box office success to date; prior to that, Moonrise Kingdom (2012) might actually be my favorite of his films.

The odd thing about The French Dispatch—originally slated for release over a year ago, delayed due to COVID—is how much potential it could have had if one of its many stories were simply expanded into its own feature film. My feelings about each of the five stories—three longer ones and two shorter ones—vary, although to be fair, they can’t vary too wildly considering the consistency of visual style. Say what you want about Wes Anderson, you certainly can’t say his films are anything like any other. When it comes to having a unique vision, this guy is the real deal. The issue, I suppose, is how much his singular vision threads so consistently through all of his films. It might not be unfair to say that once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.

But, there are always degrees. Anderson’s films often spend so much time on the theatricality of their screen presentation—and moments of The French Dispatch take theatricality to a quite literal level—they often leave little time or energy to the dimensions of their characters. This was what I liked about Moonrise Kingdom, which allowed for some fleshing out of character. The stories in The French Dispatch are further constrained by their shorter run times.

And: The French Dispatch is seriously stacked with movie stars. This has been happening in Anderson’s films for a while, but none of his previous films hold a candle to this one, which features a separate ensemble cast in five different vignettes, making it basically five times more of an ensemble cast. Who even gets top billing, anyway? No one, apparently: the poster, while featuring an image packed with maybe a hundred people, doesn’t even bother listing actor names in the credits. That said, it does arrange the characters roughly by row, and these ones are up front: Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Benicio Del Toro, Adrien Brody, Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Timothée Chalomet, Frances McDormand. Just behind them include the likes to Lois Smith, French actress Léa Seydoux (who was in Blue Is the Warmest Color as well the last two Bond films), Bob Balaban, and Mathieu Amalric (also from a Bond film, having played the villain in Quantum of Solace—he also appeared in The Grand Budapest Hotel). Other surprisingly famous people you have to struggle to find include Willem Dafoe, Elisabeth Moss, Christoph Waltz, Liev Schreiber, Edward Norton, Henry Winkler, Saoirse Ronan, Jason Schwartzman—the list goes on and on.

It may interest some to note that the full title of this film is The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, and it is very much Anderson’s homage to The New Yorker. Thus, it’s easy to imagine huge fans of The New Yorker will be potentially delighted by this film. This conceit is what actually connects the separate stories, as they are representative of three earlier stories of said publication, reprinted in a farewell issue after its publisher (Bill Murray) dies. The two shorter “stories” that make up this film are from the point of view of the staff of this publication, first a brief telling of another story, and then a sort of brief memorial. (One of the five “ensemble casts” is of the magazine’s staff; four of them serving as voice-over narrator as tellers of their separate stories: Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, and Jeffrey Wright.) At least two of the stories are reportedly either inspired by or based on real stories published in The New Yorker.

I always enjoy articles from The New Yorker whenever I get around to reading them, so I guess I like The New Yorker fine—I just don’t have a nuanced knowledge of its style and history. There’s a lot of layered meaning in the presentation here, some of it arguably, if subtly, meta, and a lot of it difficult for me to grasp. I felt like there was a lot of narrative threads connecting in many ways that I was not catching. Wes Anderson is the kind of filmmaker who takes the idea of “no accidents onscreen” to the extreme. Everything about the camera work, the production design, and especially the blocking, is so exact that it borders on losing some of its art.

I did quite enjoy Revisions to a Maifesto, in any case—the one in which Frances McDormand and Timothée Chalamet are revolutionaries who wind up having a brief affair. The Concrete Masterpiece, the first of the three longer stories, about a convicted murderer (Del Toro) selling his paintings of the prison guard (Seydoux) to an overzealous art dealer (Brody), was moderately amusing. The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner, in which the title character (Amalric) has his son kidnapped by criminals (Norton, and others) for ransom, was entertaining but visually convoluted.

Basically, the same could be said of The French Dispatch as could be said of virtually any Wes Anderson film: if you like his other movies, you’ll like this one. As a rule, I like them fine.

Overall: B