THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – NOT TO BE MISSED
The English language is unique in that the term “story”, polysemous, is used to designate both an imagined story and, for example, a press article. The distinction traditionally made in French between fiction and factual matters less in English than the gesture of telling, which, in both cases, implies taking on a part of subjectivity, an effort of style. The latest feature film by Wes Anderson, an American director of Texan origin living in Paris, is located precisely in this area of semantic confusion between the two languages. Paying tribute to a certain idea of the American written press – as embodied by a “news magazine” such as The New Yorker – and to the famous feathers which were affiliated to him – Rosamond Bernier, SN Behrman, Mavis Gallant or James Baldwin -, he weaves more broadly an ode to the art of the story, as maniac classification of facts, and to writing, as reinvention of the world.
For this, the author of Aquatic Life (2004) and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) imagines a strange intermediate territory: a fantasy of a French town, Ennui-sur-Blasé (to which Angoulême lends its walls), which would at the same time be the hunting ground for American journalists, all this because a boss press from Kansas, Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray), established his home there with the editorial staff of The French Dispatch, prestigious weekend supplement from Kansas Evening Sun. When his death has occurred, the cream of the editorial team meets to compose not only his obituary, but a final number faithful to his memory, with four major reports that give the film its structure for sketches.
Unheard-of field of inventiveness
The first of them, The travel diary, is a whimsical tour of the city by bike by the plumitif Sazerac (Owen Wilson), who maps out the main lines with a clear preference for suburbs and lowlands. The concrete masterpiece, told by lecturer JKL Berensen (Tilda Swinton), looks back on the creation of a monumental fresco by an interned psychopathic painter (Benicio Del Toro), whose muse is none other than his own jailer (Léa Seydoux). Redesign of a manifesto replay the days of May 68 as a delicious adolescent romance, between the student Zeffirelli (Thimothée Chalamet) and the passionaria Juliette (Lyna Khoudri), against a backdrop of schoolboy conflict between generations. Finally, a piece of resistance, The Commissioner’s private dining room consists of an unbridled thriller about how a brilliant chef, Nescaffier (Stephen Park), saved the son of a police officer (Mathieu Amalric) from the clutches of a mafia horde.
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