When a Wes Anderson film comes out it is always an important event: his new feature film «The French Dispatch», the absolute star of the weekend in cinemas, is no exception.
The narrative revolves around a wide series of events and characters linked to the Parisian editorial team of the French Dispatch newspaper, but the story follows three distinct narrative lines that give life to a collection of semi-independent stories, which correspond to various sections of the magazine.
It was presented as a “love letter to journalism and journalists” this delightful film in which all the stylistic elements typical of Wes Anderson’s cinema are exasperated as never before. There really is all the authorial verve of the American director in this product where his strong visual exuberance emerges: genres and styles, live action and animation, colors and black and white are mixed in this real psychedelic carousel that will be loved by the admirers by the author and probably detested by his most determined detractors.
An ironic journey full of quotes
Presented in competition at the last Cannes Film Festival, “The French Dispatch” is a wild journey full of irony, in which Anderson’s staging reaches truly relevant aesthetic levels: the photographic care is remarkable, so much for the play of light and shadow as for the attention with which the various elements are inserted within each shot. Capable of entertaining and entertaining with taste, the film offers several tributes to cinema and French-language comics: among the many references, a special mention goes to one of the opening shots, which marvelously quotes Jacques Tati’s splendid «Mon oncle».
The greatest inspiration, however, undoubtedly comes from the New Yorker, not only for the starting script, but also for the images proposed, as the closing credits show very well. we can mention Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand, Benicio Del Toro, Saoirse Ronan, Willem Dafoe and Timothée Chalamet.