#MovieReview: The French Dispatch – a triumph for Wes Anderson fans and no one else

The French Dispatch will no doubt enliven long-time fans of director Wes Anderson, but might be tedious for anyone who does not admire his style.

Anderson is known for having one of the most specific eyes in modern cinema, with overly-stylised and meticulously symmetrical shots.

The style has lent itself well to a number of different genres such as family comedy (The Royal Tenenbaums), family drama (The Darjeeling Limited) and period-piece action comedy (The Grand Budapest Hotel).

In Dispatch, however, Anderson picks and chooses his genre, delivering 3 distinct vignettes throughout the film which completely throws off its pacing.

Spoilers to follow.

The film is centred around the French Dispatch, a fictional magazine based explicitly on the New Yorker at the height of its fame.

The Dispatch is published out of a fictional French town called Ennui-sur-Blasé (which essentially translates as boredom and apathy), and that name tells you all you need to know about Anderson’s cutesy attention to detail.

Dispatch is broken into 3 main sections, each based on a story submitted for the Dispatch’s final issue by the team of star journalists.

They are all told in mixed medium, vacillating between black and white, stop motion, technicolour and animation.

To try and describe the plot of any of them would be an exercise in futility – or perhaps an exercise in Ennui-sur-Blasé.

Generally, however, they are the story of a tortured artist, a young group of revolutionaries and a food critic who becomes involved in a high-stakes heist.

All three vignettes draw all-star casts and the film is bursting at the seams with A-list power, many of whom have become Anderson regulars.

Tilda Swinton is typically excellent, and a charmingly mellifluous Jeffrey Wright steals the show.

Before it becomes unfair, it is necessary to acknowledge that Anderson has complete control and understanding of his craft.

There is no extra shot or forgotten detail in the almost 2-hour runtime, every frame of which could be a painting.

The style has many admirers and Anderson is oft touted for his unique perspective, something which art in general is seeing less of.

It is also enjoyable to see an original film made for adults that is not going to have any sequels or a Dispatch Extended Universe.

That Anderson can still attract funding to make big-budget Indies is a good sign for an industry which has become preoccupied with appealing to the lowest common denominator that can afford a movie ticket.

But still, despite the obvious stylistic choices and strong performances, Dispatch feels like a magazine that needs some editing.

Merging the 3 vignettes was always going to be a difficult proposition, and despite a few narrative palate cleansers, everything feels somewhat jumbled.

Alone, the final vignette would make a wonderfully wacky and weird short film, but in Dispatch it just feels buried.

Altogether, fans of Anderson will no doubt defend Dispatch to the death and there are obvious merits, but most people are likely to find the film tedious and inaccessible on first viewing.

If you would like to see more original studio films however, then this is exactly the kind of film to buy an admission ticket for.

Rated 18 for scenes of explicit nudity, implied sex and some strong language.
3/5.