KYMM'S 365 DAY MOVIE CHALLENGE #43: THE FRENCH DISPATCH (co-wri/dir by Wes Anderson, USA)

The French Dispatch (2021)

“A message from the foreman, one hour to press.”
“You’re fired.”
“Really?”
“Don’t cry in my office.”

I must say that I’ve always been a big fan of Wes Anderson. I haven’t seen every single one of his movies, but of course I adore Rushmore, like everybody else, and Moonrise Kingdom and The Grand Budapest Hotel and Isle of Dogs I thought were just absolutely wonderful. The Royal Tenenbaums never quite grabbed me like it did many others, but I greatly enjoyed The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, which is one of his more polarizing films.

All this is to say that I am not new. I am familiar with his somewhat arch style and boxy, square, fussy production design. But somehow, with this film I think I’ve decided I have had it with Wes Anderson. Suffice it to say, I did not care for it.

Right from the start it just felt so hemmed in and calcified. That first shot of the waiter bringing the drinks upstairs in that complex fashion with all the staircases, I thought it was just too cute, and I could feel how pleased Anderson was with himself. It felt almost smug.

More than usual, it wasn’t just dollhouse-y, it was a quaintsy-wainstsy petrified doll house, tight and stiff and just plain tiresome. And when there’s this many actors mumbling and poker faced, it’s just too much. The actors who really stood out were the ones who bucked the system and had some expression.

The story, as such, is about The French Dispatch, a supplement to a Kansas City newspaper run by Bill Murray. Forgive me, there are so many millions of people in this movie that I cannot write down their character names and their real life names, I just don’t have the energy, the inclination, or the interest.

Anyway, Bill Murray dies at the very beginning of the movie and the paper will be shut down after that, so we see some of the stories that has been in the paper before, presumably they are the ones that are going to be reprinted for the final issue.

The first one is definitely the most interesting and engaging. Benicio Del Toro plays an insane murderer, but is discovered as a great artist while in prison. His guard, Lèa Seydoux, is his muse, another prisoner, Adrian Brody, is an art dealer and becomes Del Toro‘s representation when he gets out of jail. Tilda Swinton, for some unknown reason doing a perfect Barbara Walters impression, is the journalist recounting their story.

I think one of the reasons this vignette works is because do you have both Adrien Brody and Tilda Swinton playing big emotions with Benicio Del Toro and Lèa Seydoux doing the smaller, more subtle performances. All four of them are great, this section is great, it is downhill from here.

The second part was about a student uprising led by Timothée Chalamet, reported on by Francis McDormand. I will say, though I found this to be turgid and dull, Timothée Chalamet was quite good. I have spent the past few years not understanding what anybody sees in him, but he was entirely charming in this, and I have totally turned around on him. I haven’t seen Dune yet, I’m hoping for the best.

I admit with no shame at all that I fell asleep in the middle of this part, and when I woke up, I decided I could not care less. So if anything really awesome happened in the bit I missed, forgive me. I doubt it, though.

The third section was Jefffrey Wright reporting on a great chef and being caught up in a child’s kidnapping. I honestly thought it would never end. I just considered that this film would just go on forever and I lived there now. The whole movie was under two hours, but my guess would’ve been that it was longer than Shoah, and had fewer laughs.

I think I’m just over the schtick. There is having a recognizable style, and then there’s just plain cutesy schtick. Also, Bill Murray playing the exact same character in every single movie post Rushmore has gotten old, too. I mean, you hire Murray for that character, you know what you are getting, and sometimes it’s great, but can there be one beat that is unexpected? One?

Nearly every single minute of this film falls with a dull thud in exactly the spot where it was obvious it was going to fall, and I was just bored out of my tree and praying for the sweet release of death.

This film has gotten many great reviews and apparently had a nine minute standing ovation at Cannes, so I may be in the minority here, but for me, The French Dispatch was a stone drag.

Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog