“Lhe cinema brought me to France “, declared Tuesday the director Wes Anderson, in the running for the Palme d’Or with “The French Dispatch”, a film tribute to France and to journalism. The day before, the author of “The Grand Budapest Hotel” had been applauded for the official screening of his film with the XXL cast, including the stars (Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, Timothée Chalamet, Benicio del Toro …) Caused a sensation on the red carpet.
“The reason I started coming to France is because French cinema meant so much to me, it was such a part of my life”, explained the director, white suit and pastel tie, red socks, during an interview in a hotel on the Croisette.
“More than 1,000 inhabitants of Angoulême in the film”
“I have been waiting for a long time for the opportunity to make a real full fledged movie here”, he added. This allowed “to work with actors that I like and that I would not have recruited in English-speaking roles”, adds the director citing Mathieu Amalric or Léa Seydoux but also the newcomers in his family of cinema like Cécile de France, Guillaume Gallienne or Hippolyte Girardot.
The film, shot in Angoulême and tinged with the usual soft madness of Wes Anderson, pushes his art of miniature and detail further, with a story in four chapters, in the fictional French town of Ennui-sur-Blasé.
“It was like making three or four films, I had to design, do the casting, everything had to be done. Every time we did a new story, and there were a lot of extras. ‘Angoulême in the film. When we screen the film there, we will fill the entire cinema with “.
“Even though my films can seem a bit Byzantine and complex at times, all I want to do is tell a story in a conventional way,” he adds. “I have my characters, I want to build a world for them and bring the viewer into them”, pursues the one who loves “work in (his) small space separate from industry”.
Wes Anderson, who had already finished “The French Dispatch” before the pandemic, is preparing a film in Spain and wants to be serene four days from the Cannes list, he who is “rarely left with trophies” during festivals: “I’m happy that we were able to show the film in Cannes, it’s already very good”, he said. “I mean, I don’t mean to suggest that I don’t want to… If there are any members of the jury around, please, please!”, he jokes.
Mathieu Amalric’s filming memories
The French actor and director Mathieu Amalric is part of the cast gathered in Angoulême. He confided in Cannes on this experience: “With Wes Anderson, we have to stay three days on a shoot and finally, it is better to plan three weeks! We don’t want to imagine what his story will be before playing. We just want to be ready like an athlete to do what he asks of us “. As for the choice of Angoulême, if he explains that “the different reliefs” had to weigh, Mathieu Almaric also retains “this wonderful studio in this abandoned factory”, as he describes the former Cofpa in Gond-Pontouvre.
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