Overview
It appeared true when The French Dispatch dropped its first trailer, and it definitely is true now that the film is out in the world: with his tenth release, Wes Anderson has made his most Wes Anderson movie ever. And yes, while editors fictional and real may disagree — The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun's Arthur Howitzer Jr (Bill Murray, On the Rocks) among them — it's incredibly easy to use Wes Anderson's name as both an adjective and a verb. In a sentence that'd never get printed in his latest feature's titular tome (and mightn't in The New Yorker, its inspiration, either), The French Dispatch is firmly the most Wes Anderson movie Wes Anderson has ever Wes Andersoned.
It's also now available to stream at home, even though it's still currently screening in cinemas Down Under. The star-studded affair is the latest big-name flick to get fast-tracked from the silver screen to whatever-sized device you watch along with at home, alongside everything from Dune to The Matrix Resurrections in Australia — and has just landed on Disney+.
All of the usual Anderson touches are all covered in The French Dispatch: the immaculate symmetry that makes each frame a piece of art is present, naturally, as are gloriously offbeat performances from an all-star cast that also spans Tilda Swinton (Memoria), Owen Wilson (Loki), Timothée Chalamet (Dune), Adrien Brody (Succession), Frances McDormand (Nomadland), Léa Seydoux (No Time to Die), Jeffrey Wright (also No Time to Die), Elisabeth Moss (The Invisible Man), Saoirse Ronan (Ammonite), Edward Norton (Motherless Brooklyn), Willem Dafoe (Nightmare Alley) and Jason Schwartzman (Fargo).
And yes, as it spins stories set in the fictional French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé in the mid-20th century, where Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Murray) has turned a series of travelogue columns into a weekly American magazine — as a supplement to the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, The French Dispatch, staffed by top expatriate journalists, and covering everything from life in France, world politics, high and low art, and diverse stories of human interest — the film proves equally dreamy and precise with its pastel- and jewel-hued colour palette. Also covered: the miniatures and animated interludes and split screens, the knack for physical comedy, and the mix of high artifice, heartfelt nostalgia and dripping whimsy, too.
Anderson knows what he loves, and also what he loves to splash across his films — and it's all here. With The French Dispatch, he also adores stories that say as much about their authors as the world, the places that gift them to the masses, and the space needed to let creativity and insight breathe. He likes pictures that look as if someone has doted on them and fashioned them with their hands, too, and is just as infatuated with the emotional possibilities that spring from such loving and meticulous work. Indeed, each of his films expresses that pivotal personality detail so clearly that it may as well be cross-stitched into the centre of the frame using Anderson's hair, this one included.
Obviously, as has been the case in every Anderson film from Bottle Rocket and Rushmore to Isle of Dogs and now this, every frame in The French Dispatch looks like it belongs on a wall — or in Anderson's own recent museum exhibition. Now, it can screen on yours, all as part of a regular Disney+ subscription.
Check out the trailer for The French Dispatch below:
The French Dispatch is now available to stream via Disney+. Read our full review.