End of the 2000s. Perched on a Vélib, two escogriffes roam the deserted streets of Paris in the early morning hours. Long hair, tweed jacket, Wes Anderson and Jarvis Cocker marvel at the beauty around. They made a name for themselves by applying their dandyism to the cinema, for the first; to rock, for the second. Both dream of Paris since childhood, Anderson the Texan after having gorged himself on Jean Renoir’s films, Cocker the Englishman after having rocked the songs of Françoise Hardy. Paris will not disappoint them, to the point that they will eventually settle there, with wife and child.
The result of this epiphany, The French Dispatch, released Wednesday, October 27. Doesn’t it open up with a reporter’s ode to France on a bicycle? In his offices, in the shade of the Montparnasse tower, Wes Anderson specifies that the film is the combination of three desires: to extol the charms of his adopted homeland; make a sketch film, in the spirit of The Gold of Naples (1954), by Vittorio De Sica; and tell the story of a magazine, inspired by the weekly The New Yorker. “Once the script was written, I realized that it was mostly a film about exile: what pushes some people to rebuild themselves far from where they grew up? “
Jarvis Cocker plays there a fictional singer, Tip-Top, revered by the youth of the Sixties. For the soundtrack, the ex-leader of the Pulp group has taken over Aline, Christophe’s tube. As well as eleven other “French pop” standards, collected on the album Tip-Top Boredom Songs, released October 22. “In 2006, at the Palace of Versailles, I played records to celebrate the release of the film Marie Antoinette, by Sofia Coppola: the sound was awful, no one was dancing… Wes took pity on me, we sympathized, sharing our expat experiences ”, retrace Jarvis Cocker, 58 years old.
“Orchestrate chaos”
The Englishman just wrote a song for Asteroid City, Anderson’s next film, in which he will play a cowboy. He has just returned from his filming in Spain, 50 kilometers from Madrid, where the desert of the Monument Valley has been reconstituted. The filmmaker evokes a production “Wildly adventurous”, turned upside down by stormy weather and a group of actors from a “Emotional energy” he had never met before.
Among them, a number of regulars of Andersonnian enchantments (Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton…), and some newcomers (Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson…). “We shot some very complicated shots, with a lot of moving actors, describes Anderson, 52, with drawn features. It was necessary to orchestrate the chaos. “ And Jarvis Cocker to abound: “When you watch Wes films, their thoroughness is such that you imagine him controlling every detail. However, on the set, mastery coexists with spontaneity. Of course, he invites you into his world with a storyboard and a list of hyper-precise references … But, at the same time, he watches for every spark of life, so that his visions take shape. “
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