Wes Anderson casts the eye into a whirlwind of split screens, monochrome medleys and freeze frames creating the fictional French city. Lea Seydoux shines in the midst of it all, crafting her francais facades with the coaching of Peggy Hall.
In The French Dispatch Wes Anderson displays his artistic talent as director entwining three separate storylines into one scene, working with the stars Lea Seydoux, Timothee Chalamet, Bill Murray, Benicio del Toro, and Saoirse Ronan. One story reveals the the painting skills of a violent psychopath as he projects his love for the stony warden, played by Lea Seydoux. The second follows student radical Timothee Chalamet as he crafts a revolutionary manifesto with the aid of a journalist. Then the third tracks the kidnapping of the chief’s son by the local gangster, Edward Norton. However, as viewers we are not so much required to extract information from the plot itself, but the craftsmanship involved in the making. Anderson sets stage play against comic-strip scenes, disrupts colour film with black-and-white imaging, replacing our cinematic expectations with a new creative standard. Peggy Hall’s talents coaching the French accent and dialect are key to bringing this creation to life.
