Tagline:
All grand beauties withhold their deepest secrets.

Wide Release Date:
October 22, 2021

Directed by:
Wes Anderson
Screenplay by:
Wes Anderson
Story by:
Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Hugo Guinness, Jason Schwartzman
Produced by:
Wes Anderson, Steven Rales, Jeremy Dawson

Starring:
Owen Wilson
Benicio del Toro
Tony Revolori
Adrien Brody
Tilda Swinton
Bob Balaban
Henry Winkler
Léa Seydoux
Frances McDormand
Timothée Chalamet
Lyna Khoudri
Christoph Waltz
Rupert Friend
Jeffrey Wright
Liev Schreiber
Mathieu Amalric
Stephen Park
Willem Dafoe
Edward Norton
Saoirse Ronan
Bill Murray
Elisabeth Moss
Jason Schwartzman
Fisher Stevens
Anjelica Huston

PREGAME THOUGHTS

I’ve seen many Wes Anderson movies, but I haven’t yet seen The French Dispatch. These are literally my only pregame thoughts, so here we go.

THE 600(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (Bill Murray) is the editor-in-chief of a New Yorker-type magazine called The French Dispatch in the fictional town of Ennui-sur-Blasé. After dying of a heart attack, his will stipulates an immediately ceasing of the publication following one last issue. The issue contains four stories, and we will see them now!

The Cycling Reporter
Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson in a stupid hat) gives a very brief description of Ennui-sur-Blasé, including its past and how it compares to its present. Consider me ennuied and blaséed.

The subway system will take you to all the shittiest hat stores Ennui-sur-Blasé has to offer!

The Concrete Masterpiece
Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio del Toro) is in prison for murder. J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton) presents a lecture at an art gallery that is celebrating Rosenthaler’s prison paintings. They’re entirely unrecognizably abstract nude pieces of Simone (Léa Seydoux), a prison guard with whom Rosenthaler has formed a romantic relationship.

Julien Cadazio (Adrien Brody) is in prison for tax evasion. A RESPECTABLE ART DEALER, Cadazio is enchanted by one of these paintings and buys it. After getting out of the joint, Cadazio displays it and Rosenthaler becomes the newest It Girl in the art world! Finding it difficult to follow with new inspiration, Rosenthal falls into a deep depression until Simone convinces him to involve himself in a long-term project. He doesn’t have paintings to release to the public for three years.

Cadazio becomes frustrated with the lack of progress. He, his family, and a large group of other artists bribe their way into the prison and discover a concrete wall of Rosenthaler’s new artwork. A riot breaks out during the reveal, which Rosenthal helps stop. Subsequently, he is released on probation. Simone, with all the money she earns for being involved with the projects, also leaves the prison. The two stay in touch via correspondence, but they never see each other again.

Point me in the direction of Halle Berry, I wanna give her a big ol’ smooch.

Revisions to a Manifesto
This convoluted story involves a “Chessboard Revolution” where a group of young kids communicate to the police via chess. It regards boys’ access to the girls’ dormitories. Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) reports on the revolution, led by Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet). The revolution snowballs into a uprising of titanic proportions! For some reason! Mostly because a student named Mitch-Mitch (Mohamed Belhadjine) got conscripted into the military.

Krementz starts a romance with Zeffirelli and helps him write his manifesto. Zeffirelli bickers over the manifesto with a girl named Juliette (Lyna Khoudri). Juliette is in love with Zeffirelli, which initially makes Krementz jealous but she gets over it.

Eventually, Zeffirelli dies while repairing a pirate radio tower. He becomes a martyr for the revolution. His story becomes a play production. Wes Anderson loves play productions!

The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner
Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) speaks to a talk show host (Liev Schreiber) about a private dinner with the Ennui police commissioner, or The Commissaire (Mathieu Amalric). During the dinner, the Commissaire’s son, Gigi (Winston Ait Hellal), is kidnapped for ransom. The kidnapper’s interests involve the release of a man known as The Abacus (Willem Dafoe), who is held prisoner at police headquarters for doing the accounting for various criminal syndicates.

Gigi, at the kidnappers’ hideout, is able to send a Morse code message to have the Commissaire’s private chef, Lt. Nescaffier (Stephen Park), come cook for all of them. He poisons the radishes and all die except for Gigi and the head kidnapper honcho The Chauffer (Edward Norton). The Chauffer drives off with Gigi and starts an animated (literally) police chase action sequence. Gigi escapes through the sunroof. The Abacus gets some food too because everyone forgot about him.

If I had to express my experience in the private dining room of the police commissioner in one word, sir, it would be “food”.

The Epilogue
The staff of the French Dispatch work together to finalize the last issue of the publication. They honor Arthur Howitzer, Jr. in a final obituary.

See, wasn’t that a lot of plot? Jesus Christ, I’m tired.

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — Wes Anderson Has Out-Wes Andersoned Himself!

Wes Anderson’s bag of tricks weighs roughly seven tons, and he pulled out everything he had for The French Dispatch. This movie is packed to the brim with visually stunning cinematography. Every single shot had an immaculately-placed camera. Every single camera movement was perfectly coordinated. Every single scene, every single shot, every single still was loaded with nuance and Easter eggs and references. And the colors! Oh, the colors! Even all the black-and-white scenes were colorful! They weren’t really, but you know what I mean, man.

In fact, it was so fucking visually stunning that it was distracting. I was so overloaded with fancy-schmancy artsy-fartsy scenery that I barely had time to process a lot of the (quick) French subtitles. Especially during the “Revisions to a Manifesto” story, which was already a convoluted mess of chess-related rebellion. Is this because I’m STUPID? Yeah, like a fox! Or, more likely, ol’ Wes wanted to pack as much as he could into every second of film.

Who does Wes Anderson think he is? Laurin McCracken? Please!

My brain was just a whirlwind of shapes and blinking lights and funny camera angles and Benicio del Toro’s beard. I was laughing during “The Cycling Reporter.” I was charmed by “The Concrete Masterpiece.” I was starting to get antsy during “Revisions to a Manifesto.” By the time I got to “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner” I was exhausted. I can’t believe this movie is less than two hours long. The French Dispatch felt like eating a brick of fudge in one sitting.

That’s kind of a compliment, though. I’m impressed. Some of the shots really cracked me up, like del Toro chasing Adrien Brody down in his wheelchair while Brody threw aluminum pans at him, or Owen Wilson falling down the subway stairwell on his shitty hipster bicycle! Splitting my sides! I particularly loved the “still shots” where the camera slid from scene to scene showing objects hovering with the actors struggling to stay frozen in time. Bob Balaban was all like *wiggle*.

So what’s my fucking problem overall? Besides the visuals making up for some of the tedium of the stories, there were so many, many, many damn characters in this thing that I didn’t have time to connect to a single one of them. Not one. Not Léa Seydoux as Simone the prison guard, not Edward Norton as the kidnapper, not Lyna Khoudri as the student revolutionary, not even Toheeb Jimoh as Cadet #1 (although I do like his work in Ted Lasso). If one of the points of a Wes Anderson movie is to empathize with an underdog or a sad-sack, then this movie fails hard.

I was also hoping that we would be spending more time in the actual magazine office and getting to know Arthur Howitzer, Jr. as a likely, invariably sad-sack Editor-in-Chief, but instead we were presented with the final issue of the magazine itself as the movie’s main character. It’s a clever and interesting movie structure, but maybe that’s not what I wanted. Maybe I wanted more Bill Murray!

TOPIC 2 — Timothée Chalamet’s Mustache

That is all.

Did two balding caterpillars fornicate under your nose, my good man?

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

In casting Timothée Chalamet as Zeffirelli, Wes Anderson told GQ, “I never had the inconvenience of ever thinking of anybody else for this role even for a second.” The role was written specifically for him.
Once again, an entire movie in the garbage if one actor declined a role. Timothée Chalamet in a coma? There goes $25 million! Talk about pressure. Stay out of comas, young Hollywood!

Atypical for a movie poster, the ensemble cast is grouped by storylines rather than billing.
Also atypical for a movie poster that the ensemble cast makes up approximately 480 members, or roughly six symphony orchestras.

All of the cast explained that working on this movie was the most exhilarating, challenging, and fun they ever had with any movie, since every scene they did was done with as much improvisation as possible, but also with a well-written script.
Translation: This movie was super fun because Wes Anderson spent thousands of hours slaving over a script and everyone just said what they wanted to anyway.

The film received a 9-minute standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival.
Ah, the Cannes Film Festival audience robots were stuck in a loop again, I see.

I was ERRONEOUSLY told that there would be crying in this room.

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

You know what? Yes. As much of a mental overload The French Dispatch is, stretching the runtime of the movie by 400,000,000,000 minutes like the event horizon of a black hole, there’s a 100% chance that I’ll see this again. As much as I thought I didn’t really enjoy it, this movie has been on my mind since I watched it. I’m willing to assume that subsequent viewings will only make the movie better, so I’m willing to give Wes the benefit of the doubt this time. Thin ice, pal. I hope you stepped it up with Asteroid City.

(He didn’t.)