Bill Murray is the publisher Arthur Howitzer Jr.
"Just try to make it sound like you wrote it on purpose," he repeats over and over again. Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray), the brilliant and patient editor of the magazine The French Dispatch, the supplement of Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun, that he himself founded years ago and that gives title to Wes Anderson's 10th film (the 11th is about to be shot in Chinchón).
The French Dispatch, the film is a tribute to the journalism of the mid-twentieth century. To that journalism that spared no expense because it blindly trusted its writers. To those journalists who were so francophiles as the director of The Tenenbaums, originally from Austin, Texas, and a resident of Paris for years. Anderson is always very clear in his references and inspirations and here from the beginning he spoke of his dedication to one of the magazines that have always accompanied him and that he compulsively collects: The New Yorker.
The headquarters of Wes's imaginary magazine.
So far we knew. With the trailer, we also deduced that The French Dispatch would be Wes Anderson by Wes Anderson for Wes Anderson. An ode to himself. After seeing the film at its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, we confirm. The director has surpassed himself in his symmetrical, colourful, retro aesthetic. In fixing him by detail. In his mastery of miniatures, decorations.
The film is set in the invented city of Ennui-sur-Blasé, whose exteriors he rolled in Angouleme and whose interiors are like a theater with precious scenery. Like the café Le Sans Blague, with yellow walls, small square tables, a 1960s jukebox, where Zeffirelli (Timothee Chalamet) and Lyna Khoudri (Juliette) They plan the youth chess revolution (inspired by May 68). Y Lucina Krementz as Frances McDormand veteran journalist of The French Dispatch, observes them and skips the overrated neutrality.
Structured in several chapters, such as a review of reports, reading and narration of the articles that will make up the latest issue of Howitzer's magazine, each one is a section. Starting by the local trip of Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson) by Ennui-sur-Blasé, unable to focus on positive things but finding chic even in the alleys of mafia and prostitutes.
Zeffirelli (Chalamet) and Juliette (Khoudri), jukebox love.
Then comes the art, with the words of J.K. L. Berensen (Tilda Swinton), a renowned artistic criticism that recalls the history of the painter Moses Rosenthale (Benicio del Toro) how he was discovered in jail when he transformed his love for the guard Simone (Lea Seydoux) in avant-garde oil paintings and paid very dearly for Julian Cadazio (Adrien Brody).
After Krementz's political and poetic chronicle comes the supposedly lighter and more entertaining part, but only supposedly. Anderson demonstrates the importance of something so revered also in Condé Nast Traveler, the gastronomic chronicle and critic, entrusted to The French Dispatch to Roebuck Wright (Jeffrey Wright) who fell in love with cooking "the lonely feast" every night in a different restaurant, by himself, with the table as his “comrade”.
Editorial meeting with the gastro journalist.
Roebuck has been asked for a profile of the star chef of the moment, Mr. Nescafier (Steve Park), but when he attends a chef's dinner at the Commissioner's (Matthieu Amalric) house, the event is interrupted by the kidnapping of the latter's son. And the report ends up being an adventure with a three-star menu with six passes, which begins with a cocktail that leaves them in ecstasy and ends in a tobacco pudding. Although, really, his star dish is still the blackbird pie, the blackbird pie. And the secret ingredient: poison. "It had a taste of earth, I had never tasted anything like it," says Nescafier, almost dying.
Obituaries are precisely the last section of this very special magazine. And in this final issue, they publish The definitive black chronicle. A tearful goodbye to the journalism that was.
Mr. Nescafier.