Journalism has been in the spotlight on the big screen lately. After Xavier Giannoli and the newspapers of the XIXth century for Lost illusions, it is Wes Anderson who describes the life of a magazine in The French Dispatch, delightful patchwork discovered in competition in Cannes last July.
This eccentric column with tangy flavors reviews a luxury cast of French and American stars: Léa Seydoux, Timothée Chalamet, Frances McDormand, Mathieu Amalric, Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Lyna Khoudry, not to mention Bill Murray, the filmmaker’s favorite actor.
Bill murray forever
“He’s been in all of my films since the first one, I consider him a lucky charm. When I go to one of my premieres with him I have a delicious feeling of déjà vu, ”says Wes Anderson to 20 minutes. Bill Murray is amazing as a newspaper editor who leads his world with a wand. “Wes hasn’t changed in more than twenty years that I’ve known him,” he confides in 20 minutes. It gives you a lot of freedom. This is reflected in an abundant work where fantasy is constant, whether in a prison, a café or in the midst of a student revolution.
We can find this generous film a bit crazy but it is a pleasure to get carried away in this editorial staff of reporters with familiar faces. “This film was born out of my desire to be a journalist and to direct French people whom I love. I mixed the two in a fiction, ”insists Wes Anderson. He turned The French Dispatch in Angoulême which he transformed into a fictitious town called “Ennui-sur-Blasé”, two words which do not correspond at all to The French Dispatch, It’s a joke.
The Phantom of Jacques Tati
“I chose Angoulême because this city is preserved as in a timeless bubble. There was little to do to make it look magical, ”insists Wes Anderson, who has just opened an exhibition on the film. The most Francophile of American filmmakers, who lives in Paris, multiplies tasty sketches around joyfully eccentric characters: detective cook, mad painter, prison guard or budding revolutionary seem to have been visited by the ghost of Jacques Tati. The world of Wes Anderson is abundant at will. To have the opportunity to flip through it like this, like a glossy magazine, is a total feast for the eyes and the mind.