The French Dispatch: one of the films of the year

It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but if you can tap into Anderson’s very special world it’s immensely rewarding.

(From L-R): Elisabeth Moss, Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Fisher Stevens and Griffin Dunne in the film The French Dispatch.

Although I adored Wes Anderson’s inimical, eccentric, unconventional The French Dispatch I’m afraid that some will find it overly cute or just annoying. The film, delayed for over a year by Covid, is a tribute to magazines like The New Yorker (the end credits include an impressive list of literary names who worked for the magazine and others like it.) Structured around “an Obituary, a Travel Guide and Three Features”, the anthology takes place in the fictional French city of Ennui-sur Blasé where the eponymous magazine was founded by Kansas emigre Arthur Howitzer Jr (Bill Murray) as an offshoot of The Liberty Kansas Evening Sun.

One of thousands of American ex-pats who relocated to France in the post-World War II period, Howitzer is an easygoing editor/publisher who encourages his writers to “just try to make it sound that you wrote it on purpose”.

No sentimentalist (“No Crying” is another mantra), Howitzer is loved by his employees; Anjelica Huston’s commentary reveals that he “coddled, coaxed and courageously protected his writers – they were his people”.

The Travel Guide consists of a cycling reporter, Henri (Owen Wilson), sporting a French beret, travelling around the city and pointing out the highs and lows: the rats, the cats, the gigolos, the streetwalkers and much more.

The first of the three feature stories, The Concrete Masterpiece, is described by art critic J.K.L. Berenson (Tilda Swinton) as she delivers a lecture. Moses Rosenthaler (Benicio Del Toro), imprisoned after being convicted for committing two savage murders, turns to art using prison guard Simone (Lea Seydoux) as his model. His work comes to the attention of art dealer Julien Cadazio (Adrien Brody), but there’s a surprise when the painting is finally completed (and the hitherto small screen ratio expands to its full width).

Revisions to a Manifesto is an oddball take on the 1968 riots that rocked France, though Anderson’s students are only protesting in favour of male access to the female dormitories at the University. Reporter Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand) covers the story and winds up in bed with handsome revolutionary Zeffirelli (Timothee Chalamet). The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner features Jeffrey Wright as a writer in the James Baldwin mould who reports on the kidnapping of the son of top cop Mathieu Amalric; this segment pays homage to French film noir of the 1940s and 50s, just as the sublime world of Jacques Tati was evoked in an earlier episode.

With its oddly placed subtitles, its constantly shifting screen ratios, its shifts from black and white to colour and back, the insertion of an animated sequence inspired by the style of the Tintin comic books, its exceptional cast – I haven’t even mentioned Willem Dafoe, Edward Norton, Liev Schreiber, Saoirse Ronan, Jason Schwartzman or Henry Winkler – The French Dispatch is overflowing with ideas, literary and cinematic references and whimsical humour. It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but if you can tap into Anderson’s very special world it’s immensely rewarding.

New Order (Nuevo Orden) (MA 15+)

****

In cinemas

The recent demonstrations we’ve seen in some Australian cities by anti vaxxers and anti vaxation mandaters, who have sometimes been joined by neo-Nazis, white supremacists and all manner of disaffected members of the public, have sometimes resulted in ugly threats to the lives of some politicians and their families. The Mexican film New Order comes, then, at a particularly apposite time; it’s a frightening depiction of social unrest that leads to mass bloodshed. The Venice prizewinner is a superbly staged, concise and possibly prophetic insight into the very near future.

The film opens with scenes of chaos and violence, prefiguring what is to come. Blood and green paint (red, green and white are the colours of the Mexican flag) flow in a beleaguered hospital setting.

Then we move to a more serene atmosphere, the calm before the storm, as the wealthy members of the Novelo family, who live in the upscale Mexican City suburb of Pedegral, gather to celebrate the wedding of Marianne (Naian Gonzalez Norvind) – whose bridal dress is red - to Alan (Dario Yazbel), a successful architect. While they await the arrival of the judge who will perform the civil ceremony, family and friends are enjoying the lavish food and drink served to them by members of the household staff.

While the rich are making merry, a stranger arrives at the Novelo compound – not really a stranger but the husband of a woman who used to work for the family but who is now hospitalised. Rolando (Eligio Melendez) tries to explain that his wife, who is scheduled to undergo a major operation, has been unceremoniously removed from her hospital bed to make way for people who have been injured in the ongoing street demonstrations. But Rolando has picked the wrong day to ask a favour from the Novelos: Rebecca Novelo (Lisa Owen) is sympathetic but sends Rolando off with a fraction of the money he needs to move his wife to a private hospital. Marianne is more sympathetic; she even leaves the party, accompanied by Cristian (Fernando Cuatle), the son of Marta (Monica Del Carmen), the family housekeeper, and drives to Rolando’s modest house. Consequently, she’s away when the Novelo compound is invaded by the demonstrators and revolutionaries, an invasion that leads to bloodshed.

New Order is written and directed by Michel Franco, one of a handful of excellent directors to emerge from Mexico in recent years. It’s Franco’s sixth film, but the first of his films to screen in cinemas in this country – and it marks him as a major talent. Tapping into the civil unrest sweeping the globe, he goes for the jugular and pushes the theme to its logical, or illogical, conclusion. He also makes the point that nothing will really change; there will always be powerful people in charge, whether they belong to the Right or the Left or are even, in the beginning, anarchists. Totally gripping and completely uncompromising, New Order is a powerful and deeply disturbing movie.

Dear Evan Hansen (M)

**1/2

In cinemas

Lauded with several Tony Awards, the musical Dear Evan Hansen, written by Steven Levenson with songs by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, was a notable stage success, but, under the direction of Stephen Shbosky, it translates less successfully to the screen. For one thing, Ben Platt, who played the title character in the original Broadway production, is some ten years too old for the part; Evan is supposed to be a teenager in his last year of high school.

He lives with his single mother, Heidi (Julianne Moore), a hard-working nurse, and he’s painfully shy. His psychiatrist has given him the task of writing letters to himself as a kind of therapy. At school he’s a loner; he recently broke his arm, which is in a caste, but none of the other kids has signed it or, indeed, shown much interest in him. The plot kicks in when Evan has an encounter with the overbearing bully Connor Murphy (Coltan Ryan), who knocks him down, takes from him one of the letters he’s written to himself, and scrawls his name in big letters on the plaster caste. Shortly after this unpleasant encounter, Evan learns that Connor has committed suicide; the letter ‘to Evan Hansen’ was found in his pocket and his grieving parents, Cynthia (Amy Adams) and Larry (Danny Pino), want to meet the boy they assume was their son’s close friend.

The suicide of a troubled high-school student seems a rather curious starting-point for a musical. Evan is virtually adopted into the Murphy family as a kind of substitute for their dead son, and becomes involved in a school campaign to immortalise Connor’s memory; he also becomes infatuated with Zoe (Kaitlyn Dever), the dead boy’s sister.

Stretched out to an unwieldy 2¼ hours with not-very-memorable songs, the film works best in the scenes with the mothers; Adams and Moore pack a great deal of emotion into their roles. But the miscasting of Platt remains an obstacle that’s hard to overcome.