The French Dispatch (titled onscreen as The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun) is a 2021 American anthology comedy drama film written, directed, and produced by Wes Anderson from a story he conceived with Roman Coppola, Hugo Guinness, and Jason Schwartzman. It features an expansive ensemble cast and follows three different storylines as the French foreign bureau of the fictional Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun newspaper publishes its final issue.
The first segment, "The Concrete Masterpiece", follows an incarcerated and unstable painter, and stars Benicio del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton and Léa Seydoux. The second, "Revisions to a Manifesto", is inspired by the May 68 student protests, and stars Frances McDormand, Timothée Chalamet, and Lyna Khoudri. The third, "The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner" features Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, and Stephen Park, and follows the kidnapping of a police commissioner's son. Bill Murray also stars as Arthur Howitzer Jr., the paper's editor, while Owen Wilson appears in a short segment that introduces the film's fictional setting of Ennui-sur-Blasé.
The project was first mentioned in August 2018 as an untitled musical set after World War II. That December, the film was officially announced, with Anderson calling it a "love letter to journalists". Filming took place between November 2018 and March 2019, with cinematographer Robert D. Yeoman, in the city of Angoulême, France. In post-production, editing was completed by Andrew Weisblum and the score was composed by Alexandre Desplat.
Following a delay from 2020, The French Dispatch premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on July 12, 2021, and was theatrically released in the United States by Searchlight Pictures on October 22, 2021. It received generally positive reviews, with praise for its score, production design, and performances. It has grossed $46 million worldwide against its budget of $25 million.
Plot
In 1975, in the fictional French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé (from French, literally, "boredom on jaded"), Arthur Howitzer Jr., the editor of the magazine The French Dispatch, dies suddenly of a heart attack. According to the wishes expressed in his will, publication of the magazine is immediately suspended following one final farewell issue, in which four articles are published, along with an obituary.
The Cycling Reporter
Herbsaint Sazerac delivers a cycling tour of Ennui-sur-Blasé, demonstrating several key areas such as the arcade, Le Sans Blague café and a pickpocket's alleyway. He compares the past and the present of each place, demonstrating how much and yet how little has changed in Ennui over time.
The Concrete Masterpiece
J.K.L. Berensen delivers a lecture at the art gallery of her former employer, Upshur "Maw" Clampette, in which she details the career of Moses Rosenthaler. Rosenthaler, a mentally disturbed artist serving a sentence in the Ennui prison for murder, paints an abstract nude portrait of Simone, a prison officer with whom he develops a relationship. Julien Cadazio, an art dealer also serving a sentence for tax evasion, is immediately taken by the painting and buys it despite Rosenthaler's protests. Upon his release, Cadazio convinces his family of art exhibitors to put it on display, and Rosenthaler soon becomes a sensation in the art world. Privately, Rosenthaler struggles with inspiration to the point of near-suicide, and devotes himself to a long-term project at Simone's challenging.
Three years later, Cadazio, his uncles, Clampette, Berensen, and a mob of artists inspired by Rosenthaler, all frustrated at the lack of further paintings, bribe their way into the prison to confront him, only to discover that his masterpiece is in fact a series of frescoes in the concrete prison hall. Angered that the paintings are irremovable from the prison, Cadazio gets into a physical altercation with Rosenthaler, but soon comes to appreciate the paintings for what they are, and later arranges for the entire wall to be airlifted out of the prison into a private museum in Kansas, owned by Clampette. For his actions in halting a prison riot that breaks out during the reveal of the paintings, Rosenthaler is released on probation. Simone also departs after earning a great sum of money for becoming the inspiration and motivation for Rosenthaler during his incarceration. Simone and Rosenthaler maintain correspondence following his release, but never see each other again.