Luckily for my delicate nervous system and my limited patience, I was late to the knowledge of the universe (which is corny those who repeat too many times their conviction of owning an artistic world) by director Wes Anderson. It happened twenty years ago at a festival in Berlin. That movie was titled The Tenenbaums. The many admirers of this man, old postmodern or new modern, spoke with rapture and complicit winks, of the infinite intelligence, originality and grace that adorned his previous films, those that I had not seen, titled Thief robbing thief and Rushmore Academy. And I did not understand anything in the argument of The Tenenbaums, daringly assuming he possessed it. There was a lot of laughter in the room. They claim that that gesture is contagious when it occurs in public, but I remember my Buster Keaton expression throughout his footage. Also the danger of coming to the conclusion that you do not understand what is transparent or luminous for others, that is, that you have become an asshole, that your few lights do not know how to enjoy the obvious. But maybe not. The problem, as some self-centered philosopher has claimed, is almost always the others.
From my infamous discovery, I owe to Wes Anderson’s cinema unforgettable hours of tedium, of observing settings as exquisite as they are hollow, narrations, characters and dialogues that pretend to be sophisticated, ironic and surreal, but that take a minute to erase from me. memory. Anderson belongs to my gallery of unbearable creators. And its tough fashion. Stars of American and European cinema are fighting to appear in his cinema. All together. Imagine that with their wages reduced to a minimum. Because they think it is very cool or that it increases their prestige to appear in them, even if their performance lasts a few minutes. It happened before in the films of the long-time essential Woody Allen. Now that they have declared him plagued, most of those luminaries would say: “Retro vade, Satan “. The sometimes dazzling and sometimes thick Terrence Malick still has that credit. They have not declared him a sinner.
On Isle of Dogs, his very boring previous film, Anderson opted for animated cinema. On The French Chronicle returns to the flesh and blood characters, even if they have the emotional weight of the silliest cartoon. It chronicles the four most relevant stories narrated in a Kansas newspaper supplement that took place in a French town called something like Boredom in Apathy. What an unusual idea, like all Anderson’s. And what crazy stories do they tell? I do not know. The usual, I imagine. Nothing that makes sense, which is what’s cool. Namely. A report about a turkey that always rides a bicycle. Another about a schizoid murderer who from prison becomes a sublime painter. More: very posh students and other more philosophers who face the police in a presumable May of 68. Finally, a cook who tries to solve the kidnapping of the son of his employer. Alternating color, black and white and sepia tone. Without an iota of grace. Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, Benicio del Toro, Willem Dafoe, Tilda Swinton (of course), Léa Seydoux, Timothée Chalamet, Adrien Brody, Mathieu Amalric appear … May there be no one missing from the exquisite family. And may they and longtime Anderson fans enjoy the imaginative party. I find it unbearable.
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