Well, Wes Anderson‘s “The French Dispatch” has premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, and it appears to be a big hit, some saying it’s one of Anderson’s best pictures and even stronger than his celebrated last live-action film, “The Grand Budapest Hotel.” Our critic Jessica Kiang wrote about the film, “’The French Dispatch”… is a work of such unparalleled Andersonian wit, that at times the sheer level of detail – mobile, static, graphic and typographic – that bedecked the screen was enough to make your correspondent’s jaw slacken.”
The review also confirms our assertion from earlier in the year before too many details were known, but the trailer basically tipped its hat: “The French Dispatch” is essentially an anthology short film, focusing on “The French Dispatch” New Yorker-style magazine at its center and then diving into those stories in four different mini-movies within, some of them with their own style.
Searchlight Pictures has released the first clip from the film, and it’s clearly from the “Revisions To A Manifesto – by Lucinda Krementz” section of the film featuring Zeffirelli (Timothée Chalamet) and Lucinda Krementz (Frances McDormand). The story is also obviously about French students who are also revolutionary French protesters—likely influenced by the notorious 1968 Paris student riots (as seen in the original trailer)— witnessed in many great films over the years, but also romanticized quite heavily in Bernardo Bertolucci’s “The Dreamers.”
Here’s the official synopsis from Searchlight Pictures, and don’t forget this cast is an all-star one.
THE FRENCH DISPATCH brings to life a collection of stories from the final issue of an American magazine published in a fictional 20th-century French city. It stars Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Léa Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Bill Murray and Owen Wilson.
READ MORE: Summer 2021 Preview: Over 50 Movies To Watch
In the clip, McDormand and Chalamet face-off. Both of them having just returned from a protest (she’s recovering from tear gas), he’s showing her his revolutionary manifesto, and she, a writer for “The French Dispatch,” is very concerned with his many typos. “The French Dispatch” is due in theaters on October 22 in the United States, but given its New Yorker-esque connections, don’t be surprised if it’s announced as part of the New York Film Festival a few weeks before that. Watch the clip below.