The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun

Wes Anderson did not make a film of three stories but a whole magazine issue. Editor Arthur Howitzer Jr. dies of a heart attack and his will shuts the paper down after one farewell number. That issue holds a cycling travelogue, three long features and an obituary, so the first proper story begins only after the travelogue. The town is not Paris. The action is set in the invented Ennui-sur-Blasé in 1975, and the shoot was not in Paris either: Anderson and production designer Adam Stockhausen wanted somewhere evoking not today’s Paris but the Paris of Jacques Tati, and settled on Angoulême. The formal choices are concrete. Robert Yeoman shot 35mm on two stocks, one for colour and one for black and white, and the frame mostly sits in 1.37:1 Academy ratio before opening to anamorphic width. The chase in the third feature turns into hand drawn animation, directed by Gwenn Germain and done by local illustrators as a nod to Angoulême’s comics tradition. Three BAFTA nominations followed, for costume, production design and score, all lost; there was no Oscar nomination. A good fit if you will follow a structure laid out like a contents page, handing each section to a different narrator. Not for a viewer who wants to attach to one character and stay to the end.