Wes Anderson doesn't do comedies, dramas, or adventure films.
He's playing Wes Anderson.
A cinematic recipe unlike any other, whose sweet madness has seduced the plethora of stars who climb the steps of Cannes for
The French Dispatch
.
There is no reason why the film, one of the most anticipated of the Cannes selection, should not derogate from the inimitable touch of this 52-year-old filmmaker, an image magician obsessed with detail and symmetry, that He has cultivated since his beginnings, with films such as
The Tenenbaum Family
(2001) or
The Aquatic Life
(2003).
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about The French Dispatch
, the new and so secret Wes Anderson?
Few directors are so associated with such an offbeat and specific style, dotted with obsessive characters tapped by fatherhood, references to the 1960s, handwritten letters, and pastel colors.
“Wes is more and more Wes
,” explains Sophie Monks Kaufman, author of a book on the director.
His early films are almost naturalistic compared to what he does today.
Where will it end? ”
.
So far, the recipe pays off.
This native of Texas, clear eyes, shoulder-length hair, dandy look, retains total artistic control over his creations and the stars flock to his film sets, which are said to be very friendly.
The most faithful is Bill Murray, who walks from film to film his phlegm and his deadpan air, to the role of editor-in-chief of the supplement of an American magazine, based in the fictional French town of Ennui- sur-Blasé, for
The French Dispatch
.
Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton and Adrien Brody also work with him regularly, and he was able to attract stars Léa Seydoux, Timothée Chalamet and Benicio del Toro for this new film.
"An easy guy"
These stars
"appear in his films because it's funny,"
British critic Dorian Lynskey told AFP.
"He is an easy type, who nevertheless produces a total aesthetic, that one would imagine rather associated with a difficult director".
Nominated seven times at the Oscars, but never a winner, this Hollywood UFO is running for the Palme d'Or in Cannes, where he competes for the second time, after
Moonrise Kingdom
in 2012.
Read also: Léa Seydoux positive for Covid-19 could not come to the Cannes Film Festival
Under the tender and colorful varnish of the small worlds that he reproduces in miniature, the work of Wes Anderson is crossed by the dramas of life: abandonment, the loss of illusions, suicide, the loss of a parent or of a child.
His parents' divorce at the age of eight marked him deeply, and broken families are a recurring theme in his films.
Childhood, in general, is omnipresent in the work of the man who also declined his style in animation: he filmed his own high school in
Rushmore
(1998), and paid tribute to the explorer Jacques -Yves Cousteau (
Aquatic Life
, 2003) or novelist Roald Dahl (
Fantastic Mr Fox
).
“
It seems he is particularly nostalgic for his 12 years,”
writes Sophie Monks Kaufman.
"He has the ability to remember that age when you can be totally overwhelmed by love at first sight, when a book can take the place of your whole world."
His cinema is sometimes described as mannered, cut out for hipsters with his taste for the ironic wink and the old-fashioned.
But his images have had a wide influence, from interior design to pubs for Gucci.
An Instagram account, "Accidentally Wes Anderson" lists photos of real places that deserve to appear in his films ...
“He created his own little industry, and he's been so successful that he doesn't have to woo the powerful,”
explains Sophie Monks Kaufman.
"Sometimes I thought about changing my approach
," Wes Anderson told US radio NPR.
But in reality, that's what I like to do ”
.
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