THE FRENCH DISPATCH
Beloved American auteur Wes Anderson has assembled one of his most impressive ensembles yet for this intricate anthology of stories from a revered 20th-Century magazine.
Over his 25-year career, Wes Anderson has cemented his place as one of the most acclaimed and popular filmmakers in world cinema, with an inimitable style and approach all his own. A competition entry at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, his much-anticipated latest film is an homage both to Anderson’s adoptive country of France and to the glory days of 20th-Century journalism. Set in the fictional French city Ennui-sur-Blasé, the film is composed of five stories from the final issue of an esteemed American magazine. When the publication’s founder and editor Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (Bill Murray) dies, his loyal staff gathers to piece together his obituary. Among them are some of Howitzer’s beloved writers, whose contributions to the magazine are presented in a series of vignettes. Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson), a.k.a. the Cycling Reporter, offers a travelogue of Ennui-sur-Blasé, reveling in the both the beautiful and the seedy parts of this ancient city. In “The Concrete Masterpiece,” J.K.L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton) reports on the career of a criminally insane painter (Benicio del Toro), his unlikely romance with a prison guard (Léa Seydoux), and his dealings with a manipulative art dealer (Adrien Brody). In “Revisions to a Manifesto,” Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) offers a first-hand account of the work of an oddball student activist (Timothée Chalamet). And “The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner” by Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) is a portrait of a celebrated local chef that unexpectedly transforms into a nail-biting crime caper involving the kidnapping of the son of the local Commissaire (Mathieu Amalric). A marvel of cinematic craft surpassing anything Anderson has done before, THE FRENCH DISPATCH is also a funny, moving, and endlessly imaginative evocation of the excitement and world-expanding power of great journalism.
CAST: Frances McDormand, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, Bill Murray
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