History Film / TheFrenchDispatch

** Later on, he sets up an art exhibition at the asylum by bribing the guards; though the trope is subverted due to them actually being offered a decent amount of money each, for some reason it's doled out in 20-franc (roughly equivalent to 5$ at the time the movie is set) notes.

* TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers: Zigzagged. [[spoiler:When the Commissaire and his police force discuss plans to free Gigi and attack the gangsters, the steps discussed and taken become more and more exaggerated, as it turns from planning to secure points to hiring climbers and an [[Wrestling/AndreTheGiant Andre the Giant]]-esque wrestling police officer called The Jeroboam]].

** Later on, he sets up an art exhibition at the asylum by bribing the guards; though the trope is subverted due to them actually being offered a decent amount of money each, for some reason it's doled out in 20-franc (roughly equivalent to $5 at the time the movie is set) notes.

** Later on, he sets up an art exhibition at the asylum by bribing the guards; though the trope is subverted due to them actually being offered a decent amount of money each, for some reason it's doled out in 20-franc (roughly equivalent to 5 dollars at the time the movie is set) notes.

** Later on, he sets up a art show at the asylum by bribing the guards; though the trope is subverted due to them actually being offered a decent amount of money each, for some reason it's doled out in 20-franc (roughly equivalent to 5 dollars at the time the movie is set) notes.

** Later on, he sets up a art show at the asylum by bribing the guards; though the trope is subverted due to them actually being offered a decent amount of money each, for some reason it's doled out in 20-franc (roughly 5 dollars at the time the movie is set) notes.

* {{Conscription}}: Military service is required in France in this movie (which was the case in the 70s), but Mitch-Mitch (a friends of Zeffirelli) defects after witnessing unspeakable horrors in the "Mustard Region."

''The French Dispatch'' is based in part on ''Magazine/TheNewYorker'', with several characters serving as direct [[ShoutOut Shout Outs]] to iconic employees and amalgamations to famous journalists in general. Initially delayed by the UsefulNotes/Covid19Pandemic, it had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on July 12, 2021, and was theatrically released on October 22, 2021.

** Arthur Howitzer Jr. is based off ''New Yorker'' founder Harold Ross, Herbsaint Sazerac is based off ''New Yorker'' travel writer Joseph Mitchell, and Roebuck Wright is a composite of Creator/JamesBaldwin and A. J. Liebling.

** Creator/AdrienBrody is after a painting. ''Again.'' And he causes yet another fight to break out because of it. Didn't he learn from [[Film/TheGrandBudapestHotel last time]]?

** Creator/AdrienBrody is after a painting. ''Again.'' Heck, the situation even ends in violence, like before! Didn't he learn from [[Film/TheGrandBudapestHotel last time]]?

* The paper is introduced by the obituary of Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (Bill Murray) - in which it is revealed that Howitzer left Liberty, Kansas, for France as a holiday - and simply never chose to return, instead making money writing dispatches from France for his father's newspaper, the Liberty Evening Sun, eventually turning the Sunday supplement of the paper into The French Dispatch, a full-blown magazine with several American ex-pat contributors. After revealing Howitzer's eventual return to Kansas after his death, and his last will and testament ordering the closure of the French Dispatch, we pull back to the last day of Howitzer's life, with him working to bring to print what would become the Dispatch's last issue - the contents of which comprise the remaining bulk of the film.

An AnthologyFilm, the plot focuses on three feature stories in the titular paper after the death of editor-in-chief Arthur Howitzer Jr. (Murray). It's introduced by a short segment "The Cycling Reporter," wherein travel writer Herbsaint Sazerac (Creator/OwenWilson) gives a brief tour of 20th-century Ennui-sur-Blasé, the film's fictional French city. The subsequent segments are as follows:

The film is concluded with an epilogue in the form of a eulogy for its late founder.

* "The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner": Narrated by Roebuck Wright ([[TheDanza Wright]][[invoked]]), this piece starts as a dining feature before a dinner with the Commissaire (Creator/MathieuAmalric) is interrupted by a kidnapping heist.

* "The Concrete Masterpiece": Narrated by J.K.L Berensen (Swinton), this story chronicles the life and artistic career of Moses Rosenthaler (Creator/BenicioDelToro), a dangerous criminal turned abstract art sensation after art dealer Julien Cadazio (Brody) takes a liking to his work.

** Cadazio shows his uncles a perfect drawing of a bird, done by Rosenthaler, drawn on a napkin using matchheads. One uncle asks if he can have it and Cadazio says "of course not." In a later montage of the success of Rosenthaler's art, that same drawing sells at an auction for thousands.

* WretchedHive: Discussed in the third segment - organized crime was brazen enough to warrant a militarized police force, eventually escalating into ''war'' when a full list of members for ''the entire underworld'' fall into the hands of the Police. As subsequent events (his son's kidnapping) will see the Police Commissioner highly motivated its likely those three gangs at least are out of business by the "present day" scenes.

* OverlyNarrowSuperlative: Lt. Nescaffier is the world's best Police Food chef in France. This isn't a joke: Police Food is a ''very'' specific style of cuisine that has requirements ranging from "items you'd find lying around a police station" to "can the ingredient be opened without alerting the suspect you're tailing."

* MsFanservice: Zigzagged. Simone spends the majority of her onscreen time posing nude for Moses, and is ''extremely'' attractive. However, both treat that aspect of their relationship professionally, and neither shows much heat for the other during the artistic process. That said, many of Simone's poses are fairly erotic.

* ImplausibleDeniability: When Rosenthaler is given a parole hearing, he tries to claim that he decapitated the two men he killed in self-defense.
** He then changes his story to say that the first one was an accident, and the ''second'' one was in self-defense.

** Part of Rosenthaler's "genius Spaniard making works while still in prison" is taken from [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Alfaro_Siqueiros David Alfaro Siqueiros]].

* TerroristsWithoutACause: The student revolutionaries in Act 2 ''have'' one, but in the interest of "journalistic neutrality," it's glossed over, and even spoken over. (This is TruthInTelevision for some ''Magazine/TheNewYorker'' articles, which act as if the reader is already familiar with current events and eschews recaps of political intricacies for character studies.) The closest we get is that A) it's left-wing, B) student-led, and C) included "male student access to the female dorms" as part of its demands.

* BrandX: The French cigaret brand "Gaullistes", standing-in for the RealLife Gauloises. Amusingly, the French word "gaulliste" means political follower of UsefulNotes/CharlesDeGaulle or modern political partisan of his doctrines.

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* ArtShift: "The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner" turns from live-action to animation during a few scenes, [[spoiler:notably the climatic car chase.]]

** The Police Headquarters is said to be located on a narrow peninsula known as the ''"Rognure d'Ongle"'', which translates as ''[[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace "nail clippings."]]''
* BlackComedy: At the end of the film, [[spoiler:the staff of the ''Dispatch'' mourn Howitzer, who is laying freshly dead on his desk, mouth gaping open, before his body is covered.]]

* CentralTheme: Loneliness. It's not hammered home until the last Act but much of the film is driven by it. The introduction shows us around the city and its people, but the author never truly interacts with anyone. The mad painter in the first act and his lover/muse are pushed together by it. Many of the students in the second act felt some kind of alienation, be it from the people they rose against or [[WeAREStrugglingTogether each other]]. And, finally, the Third Act, where our protagonist got thrown in jail for the crime of trying to ease his loneliness with the wrong sex. It's revealed that one of the reasons he focused on food as his writing is because, in a world that isn't exactly welcoming to people who love differently (or even love ''normally''), there's always a restaurant that's more than happy to give you some food as company - and as an extension, one reason why he went to France was because he'd be lonely ''anywhere'', continually seeking out something he (and by extension, Lt. Nescaffier, and by further extension, Howitzer) is missing.

* CouldntFindALighter: Zeffirelli uses the sparking battery terminal on the radio tower to light a cigar whilst repairing it. [[spoiler:This turns out to be a very, very bad idea.]]

* DownerEnding: "Revisions to a Manifesto" ends with [[spoiler:Zeffirelli dying, and his parents tearfully identifying his body.]]

* IronicEcho: Arthur Howitzer Jr. has a pretty strict "no crying" rule in his workplace. [[spoiler:This variation of the phrase is used for [[PlayedForLaughs laughs]] when he tells a worker about his termination. It's later used in a more heartwarming light in the third main story, "The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner," where he tells a tearful Roebuck Wright not to cry, in order to encourage him to persevere after he gets arrested. [[RuleOfThree It comes around a third and final time in the epilogue]]: when one staffer cries after Howitzer's death, she's reminded to consider the sign by another coworker; the implication being that they know that even in death, Howitzer wouldn't want people crying in his office, even in the act of mourning him.]]

* TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers: Zigzagged. [[spoiler:When the Commissaire and his police force discuss plans to free Gigi and attack the gangsters, the steps discussed and taken become more and more exaggerated, as it turns from planning to secure points to hiring climbers and an [[Wrestling/AndreTheGiant Andre the Giant]]-esque wrestling police officer called The Jeroboam.]]

* MinorCrimeRevealsMajorPlot: It's indicated that the Police arresting the bookkeeper for the city's mobs with his records was a matter of luck. Needless to say stopping this one arrest from destroying their entire enterprise drives the mobs' response.

* SelfPoisoningGambit: When the kidnappers of the police commissioner's son are rightfully suspicious that the food they were given was poisoned, [[spoiler:Lt. Nescaffier]] eats a bite of each dish in front of them. He is luckily rescued before he fully succumbs and recovers. Roebuck theorizes that the only reason he wasn't killed near-immediately was because [[spoiler:the Lieutenant]] was a chef and had eaten a ''lot'' of things not pleasant to normal stomachs. Its also clearly shown that [[spoiler:Nescaffier]] only eats a small amount of each dish (including the poisoned radishes) while the crooks consume full sized portions, the smaller dose, Roebuck's theory about his stomach and prompt medical attention then saved his life (the criminal's being left to expire if not already dead).

* ToneShift: Happens in universe. Roebuck Wright was supposed to be dining with the Commissioner of the police to sample "Police food" for a food critic section in the magazine. After appetizers are served a sudden kidnapping derails the meal and he's writing about a criminal investigation instead. Howitzer is a little annoyed about this as he expected the food article, but as Wright explains he did experience police cooking in the course of the adventure and having been shot at, involved in a car chase and had hand grenades thrown at him he'd rather write about that. There's a ''third'' tone shift as Howitzer notes Roebuck removed something from the entry and made it weaker: [[spoiler:a melancholic exploration of being a foreigner in not just another city, but from others in general, with the implication Howitzer left Kansas for the same reason Nescaffier and Roebuck did: constantly looking for something missing in their lives.]]

* WhamLine: During the third segment, it's nonchalantly mentioned that when the kidnappers' demands to have food were fulfilled, [[spoiler:they force Lt. Nescaffier to eat some of the food to prove it wasn't poisoned. It ''was'', and it was highly lethal.]]

* One of the many covers shown during the credits shows a [[Film/ShootThePianoPlayer pianist, slumped over at his piano with a bullet hole in the window behind him.]]

''The French Dispatch'', full title ''The French Dispatch of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun'', is a [[GenreBusting romantic comedy-drama]] written and directed by Creator/WesAnderson. The film stars Creator/TildaSwinton, Creator/TimotheeChalamet, Creator/FrancesMcDormand, Creator/BillMurray, Creator/MathieuAmalric, Creator/JeffreyWright, and Creator/AdrienBrody, among [[TheCameo many]], [[AllStarCast many others]].

* AmbiguousSituation: Why Rosenthaler brutally murdered two barkeeps. We ''see'' his two victims ''apparently'' harassing a random man, apparently ForTheEvulz, but we're not given context or dialogue shortly before said two victims get murdered.

** The Police Headquarters is said to be located on a narrow peninsula known as the ''"Rognure d'Ongle"'', which translates as ''[[IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace "nail clippings"]]''.

* ExplainExplainOhCrap: When Cadazio is showing Rosenthaler's art to a buyer, he excitedly relays to his what the buyer told him about how much she loves it, but pauses when he realized she related them to "frescoes." He then looks again at the paintings and realizes they're painted ''on'' the load-bearing concrete wall.

* IronicEcho: Arthur Howitzer Jr. has a pretty strict "no crying" rule in his workplace. [[spoiler: This variation of the phrase is used for [[PlayedForLaughs laughs]] when he tells a worker about his termination. It's later used in a more heartwarming light in the third main story, "The Private Dining Room of the Police Commissioner," where he tells a tearful Roebuck Wright not to cry, in order to encourage him to persevere after he gets arrested. [[RuleOfThree It comes around a third and final time in the epilogue]]: when one staffer cries after Howitzer's death, she's reminded to consider the sign by another coworker; the implication being that they know that even in death, Howitzer wouldn't want people crying in his office, even in the act of mourning him.]]

* TheLastOfTheseIsNotLikeTheOthers: Zigzagged. [[spoiler: When the Commissaire and his police force discuss plans to free Gigi and attack the gangsters, the steps discussed and taken become more and more exaggerated, as it turns from planning to secure points to hiring climbers and an [[Wrestling/AndreTheGiant Andre the Giant]]-esque wrestling police officer called The Jeroboam.]]

** The titular ''French Dispatch'' (or at least, the French arm of the ''Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun'') is a dead ringer for ''Magazine/TheNewYorker''. It covers a wide range of topics both mundane (student protests, art biographies) to curiously specific (French police cuisine and the shootouts involving it, fistfights at art shows, chess as a form of protest), has a very specific, novelistic approach to its subjects (down to the pretentious punctuation and layout of ''The New Yorker''), cartoons and covers that vary between relevant to the topic at hand or [[BigLippedAlligatorMoment stupid puns]], and, of course, covers things far beyond their American city.