By BRIAN TRUITT
Most journalists can’t relate to “All the President’s Men” – changing the world with our words and looking like Robert Redford while doing so. Our lives are more like that of the disparate oddballs in writer/director Wes Anderson’s new “The French Dispatch,” crafting stories that veer off on strange tangents, spotlighting colorful subjects and impossibly putting yet another issue to bed on deadline.
A love letter to both French cinema and international reportage, “French Dispatch” (★★★½ out of four; rated R; in theaters Friday) finds Anderson marrying his signature style of filming – and an A-list bunch of his usual players – with a collection of short stories featuring murderous artists, student revolutionaries and one master of police cooking. Like most anthologies, some segments are better than others but they all highlight different inspirations Anderson’s woven together for a delightful cinematic sampler.
It’s the final issue of the French Dispatch, a supplement of the Evening Sun newspaper in Liberty, Kansas, that for decades has brought the quirky residents and goings-on of Ennui-sur-Blasé home to American readers. But this last printing is also a tribute to its beloved editor and founder, Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (Bill Murray), found dead of a heart attack in his office though he plays an important role throughout the film.
Anderson inventively crafts his movie’s story structure like that of its title magazine, kicking off with cycling reporter Herbsaint Sazerac (Owen Wilson) taking readers on a travelogue of Ennui’s darker corners. (When Arthur wonders if the piece is maybe too seedy, Herbsaint argues that it’s “charming.”)