Is there any film director with a more devoted fan following than Wes Anderson? He receives almost universal critical praise and his films are enthusiastically received by his admirers, without ever achieving significant box office success. For my part, I have been left cold by his animated movies but have enjoyed most of his live action ones, notably The Grand Budapest Hotel, Moonrise Kingdom, The Royal Tenenbaums and Rushmore. Even whilst liking those, I have found them at times too self-conscious.
The French Dispatch consists of three stories involving journalists from the French foreign bureau of a fictional Kansas newspaper. An imprisoned murderer becomes a celebrated artist, a journalist becomes involved with a student uprising’s leader and a critic sees anarchists kid the chief of police’s son.
Unfortunately, this loosely structured plot enables the director to display the worst of his quirks without having to deliver a coherent narrative. Each story feels stretched to breaking point with the majority of the gags falling flat. An air of pure self indulgence pervades the film with Anderson getting lost in his own pretentiousness.
As usual, the film is full of talented and well known actors but with mixed results. Tilda Swinton fares best as an art patron in the first story as she has a meaty part and pretty much all of the funniest lines. The awful Timothée Chalamet is his usual charisma vacuum in the second instalment and drags Frances McDormand down with him. The third wastes the talents of Jeffrey Wright and Saoirse Ronan.
It is nice to look at, with a number of freeze frames staged in a painterly way and there are moments of amusement. So, I am sure that die hard fans will love this film, but others will probably find it pretty insufferable.
Rating: 4 out of 10