Culture

People Have Turned This Chaotic Cannes Pic Of “The French Dispatch” Cast Into A Meme

This is what every meeting of a Gen Z, Gen X, millennial and boomer looks like.

by Michelle Rennex  16 July 2021
Cannes Film Festival 'The French Dispatch' cast meme Wes anderson

Want more Junkee in your life? Sign up to our newsletter, and follow us on Instagram and Facebook so you always know where to find us.

Wes Anderson’s latest film, The French Dispatch, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival this week and received a nine-minute standing ovation once the film ended.

The French Dispatch is a film described to be “a love letter to journalists set at an outpost of an American newspaper in a fictional 20th-century French city”.

And featuring a star-studded cast including the likes of Owen Wilson, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Timothée Chalamet, and Frances McDormand, it’s really no surprise that the film was so well-received by the Cannes audience.

But something else from the film festival has captured the hearts of the world beyond the Cannes audience, too — and it’s this chaotic photo of Wes Anderson, Timothée Chalamet, Tilda Swinton and Bill Murray together at the event.

And no, it’s not just because of Bill Murray’s loud-ass shirt, his jorts, the dad sneakers, or the fact that he’s wearing two watches for some reason.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with the actors in the picture. In fact, they all look great.

The issue is that Murray, Anderson, Swinton, and Chalamet were all clearly told way different dress codes for the Cannes red carpet. And as every journalist has a unique beat they write about, it’s really no surprise a photo that shows the very distinct styles and personalities of each actor in a film about journalism is going viral.

Plus with the world in a constant state of chaos lately, the Cannes meme is low-pressure. All it requires is picking four things that are related to each other but still very different, and the internet came through with the goods.

Sticking to the film’s theme of journalism, some pointed out that the French Dispatch photo was the perfect representation of the stages of drafts, of different forms of literature, and of publications that actually exist.

But the four distinct personalities and style of each actor also made it easy for people to draw other obvious comparisons to real life, too.

For example, the different generations, the varied social media platforms, and even types of silverware.

So everyone remember to say thank you to Wes Anderson for picking these exact actors for The French Dispatch, which inadvertently gave the world this wonderfully chaotic gift.