The French Dispatch (2021 Wes Anderson & scr)

From a story by Anderson, Roman Coppola, Hugo Guinness and Jason Schwartman.

The French Dispatch is so packed with stuff (ideas, images, design, jokes, people) that it's a little overwhelming the first time round. But don't get me wrong - these are jaw-dropping, brilliant and gorgeous ideas, images, designs, jokes and people, and it's frequently laugh out loud funny. 

Once you get round it, it's the last issue of a strange newspaper about life in Ennui, France, aimed at the people of Liberty, Kansas.

The titles are too small and on too quickly, and in fact the same is true of the end credits, which fly by too quickly to read... and that's a serious issue. Imagine if that happened at the end of a great opera performance. It's mainly in 4x3, and flits as well from colour to black and white, often in mid-scene, in the usual array of lateral tracking shots and square on compositions.

The essence is three disparate stories. Benicio del Toro is a convicted murderer who creates modern art based on his muse, warder Léa Seydoux. Adrien Brody is an investor who ropes in his uncles Bob Balaban and Henry Winkler. Tilda Swinton is a commentating art critic.

Timothée Chalamet (good) is some type of revolutionary who writes a manifesto which journalist and lover Frances McDormand edits. Lyna Khoudri is his spirited opponent.

And lastly, Jeffrey Wright (good), a food critic with a typographic memory is interviewed by Leiv Schreiber about a memorable meal, interrupted by a kidnapping, which also involves Mathieu Amalric, Christoph Waltz, Willem Defoe, Saoirse Ronan and Edward Norton. This one ends as an animation.

Maybe it's this lack of focus that makes it - whilst dazzling and funny - more unwieldy than the similarly stylish Grand Budapest Hotel. And it's perhaps hard not to disagree with Chad Byrnes in The Village Voice who ends his review with 'Too bad the same filmmaker who went to dreadful pains to design the house and hang the drapes, forgot to inhabit it with actual human beings.'

Usual collaborators are Robert Yeoman, Alexandre Desplat and Andrew Weisblum, production designer Adam Stockhausen.

With: Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Steve Park ('Nescaffier'), Lois Smith, Tony Revolori, Larry Pine, Cécile de France, Elisabeth Moss, Jason Schwartzman, Griffin Dunne, Rupert Friend, Anjelica Huston (narrator).

Phew! is response to both experiencing and writing about this film.

Bruno Delbonnel is one of several people who receive a 'special thanks', and is in a cameo.