Film Review

The French Dispatch (2021)

A love letter to journalists set in an outpost of a US newspaper in a fictional 20th-century French city…

Throughout his career, writer-director Wes Anderson has established himself as one most distinctive filmmakers in contemporary cinema. From Rushmore (1999) to The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), his work is so uniformly meticulous and consistent, it’s instantly recognisable. In his first feature since Isle of Dogs (2018), The French Dispatch remains faithful to his distinct visual artistry. Inspired by his love for the highbrow magazine The New Yorker, Anderson delivers a multitude of eccentric figures that scurry through his deliberately whimsical stories with great spontaneity.

The French Dispatch is structured around the fictional offices of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun newspaper, where the final issue’s being assembled. At the center of the organisation is the paper’s beloved founder and editor, Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Bill Murray). Three vignettes correspond to the separate articles being published in the final issue. The first entry, titled ‘The Concrete Masterpiece’, tells the story…