![]() And Anderson’s backdrop, a kind of steroidally enhanced Frenchness reminiscent of films such as Belleville Rendez-Vous and Amélie, is rather lovely, if ultimately as far removed from reality as is the film’s romanticised view of journalism. The travelogue – a bike-powered voyage to the dark side starring Owen Wilson, which takes in pickpockets, floating corpses and bands of renegade choirboys – has a bracing savagery that’s at odds with the film’s self-consciously charming aesthetic. The first section, a portrait of a criminally insane artist (Benicio del Toro), is a sly pleasure, not least because it’s narrated by Tilda Swinton as arts correspondent JKL Berensen, a fabulously glamorous creature with buck teeth, a tangerine evening dress and the tantalising hint of a scandalous past. Elsewhere, though, there is more to admire. It says something about Anderson’s hermetically sealed privilege that he can take something as essential as dissent and render it in a tonal palette that is all cutesy pastels and adorable kitsch, while neatly sidestepping any hint of politics. This is a tale of student protest, starring Frances McDormand as ace reporter Lucinda Krementz and Timothée Chalamet as Zeffirelli, the wild-haired, chess-playing, Gauloise-sucking student leader. And however engaging the film’s final story is – the most satisfying by no small margin a food review turned heist thriller narrated by and starring Jeffrey Wright at his most mellifluous and charming – patience will be sorely tried by the segment that comes before it. The problem with the anthology structure – the film is made of three discrete stories, each based on a feature article by one of the magazine’s star writers, plus a brief scene-setting travelogue that digs into the insalubrious corners of the town of Ennui-sur-Blasé – is that it’s almost inevitably uneven. But given that on a first viewing I found it to be among the most punchable films I have ever seen, the initial bar was lower than with some of Anderson’s other pictures. Right from the start Le Fabuleux destin d’Amlie Poulain, or Amlie as it's now called in the U.S., was a runaway hit in Francethe film has managed to sell seven and a half million tickets, which translates into roughly 40 million at the box office, a sum rarely achieved by French films at home. ![]() The film company, which won two Oscars for Roberto Benignis Life Is. That is certainly the case with his latest, The French Dispatch, a showily starry portmanteau picture that takes as a jumping-off point the final issue of a supplement magazine for the fictional Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun newspaper. Miramax is pinning next years Oscar hopes on Amelie, the feel-good French film. The films of Wes Anderson, with their intricately layered details and fanatically meticulous design, almost invariably reward a second viewing.
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