The French Dispatch (2021)

(Disney Streaming, March 2022) It took me more than a decade to warm up to writer-director Wes Anderson’s films (well, either that or he got better), but since Fantastic Mr. Fox, it seems that I get what his films are about and can’t stop grinning through them. On the other hand, The French Dispatch makes a provocative case that his approach has grown formulaic. His production having slowed down throughout the 2010s, Anderson here reaches back not to Isle of Dogs but his previous The Grand Budapest Hotel in style and technique, presenting disconnected stories in a wider tapestry, eschewing diagonal camera movements, multiplying art shifts (within a coherent aesthetic) and assembling an eye-popping cast of known actors previously associated with his other productions. I won’t mention them here—the list would take over the capsule review. Focusing its eccentric presentation on the making of the last issue of an American magazine headquartered in a French City, The French Dispatch wraps three distinct short films and a snappy introduction within its larger framework as the writing staff of the magazine contemplates the death of their editor in chief, the mandated last issue of the magazine and the content of the stories contained within. Once again, oddball humour rubs shoulders with tragedy and drama everywhere we look, with deadpan delivery somehow making everything funnier. Copious details pepper the multiple narrations, with the real city of Angoulême being the backdrop for the film’s very French (not Parisian) setting. Anderson’s well-known Francophilia here finds its ultimate expression, with French actors (most notably Léa Seydoux) delivering dialogue that’s not necessarily fully translated in subtitles. Otherwise, there’s a paradoxical comfort in watching how Anderson changes his approach every few moments, panning horizontally through his sets, delivering an animated short sequence, re-creating the atmosphere of May 68 and breaking the fourth wall from time to time (all the way to actors changing on-screen to represent the passage of time). It’s funny, poignant, a bit precious and feels like Anderson is making a film for his fans. You can reasonably wonder whether this means Anderson has found his groove and will stay in it—I suppose that his next few films will answer that question. In the meantime, though, The French Dispatch is another delicious confection just waiting to be tasted.