“The French Dispatch” (M) *** and a half

I CHOSE writer/director Wes Anderson’s film for review expecting only that I would probably find in it something likely to make me at least smile, perhaps even laugh.

A big cast mostly from the top layer of the movie industry delivers a quartet of mini-plots that take themselves not quite seriously enough to generate any audible reaction from the biggest morning-session audience I’d been among since COVID-19 began,

Which is sad, because the film’s stream of humour is clever enough to respect filmgoers’ collective intelligence without belabouring it with a thick layer of slapstick, pratfalls and other mawkish physical devices. 

To be sure, it has occasional moments of unavoidable visual humour, but not so often as to be the work’s principal purpose.

The plot line focuses on a French prison, where Moses (Benicio Del Toro) awaits execution. Winsome guard Simone (Lea Seydoux) may fancy him or perhaps not. 

Other actors making major contributions to one or more of the film’s three short stories include Tilda Swinton as a kind of narrator while wearing a flaming red wig and a dental prosthesis.

There is humour sprinkled all over the film. In Ennui-sur-Blasé (actually provincial city Angouleme) Arthur Howitzer Jr (Bill Murray), publisher of a weekly news magazine for half a century, is approaching the end of his life. His will specifies that the paper is to fold when he dies. 

A literal translation of the town’s name means “utterly boring”. Some of the characters have names of notable film industry folk such as Zeffirelli, or parody names such as Nescoffier or Chou-Fleur. 

Readers may justifiably form an opinion that Anderson’s film exhibits structural characteristics similar to what I have written thus far about Arthur’s life’s work. The effect doesn’t reflect the totality of the film’s creative impact. The word best fitting both is eccentric. And what’s wrong with that?

At Dendy and Palace Electric