Wes Anderson’s meticulously stylised worlds can feel like being trapped inside an airless doll’s house for two hours. However, this light, jolly caper has an irresistible spring in its step, joining The Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore and Fantastic Mr Fox as one of Mr Anderson’s finest fancies.
Often an icy screen presence (hello Voldemort), Ralph Fiennes is warm and twinkly in too-rare comedy mode as Monsieur Gustave, The Grand Budapest Hotel’s legendary concierge. In this peach of a role he’s a rakish bisexual with a weakness for octogenarian billionairesses. One of them (Tilda Swinton, slathered in five hours’ worth of ageing prosthetics) leaves him a priceless painting, much to the rage of her evil children (including Adrien Brody), who vow to disgrace/kill Gustave and his wide-eyed apprentice, Zero (newcomer Tony Revolori).
Inspired by the writings of obscure Austrian-Jewish writer Stefan Zweig – who sounds so perfectly Wes Anderson, you can’t believe he’s real – this is a gorgeous, six-tiered confection of a movie, cherry-topped with cool-points cameos from Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray (go to the loo and you’ll miss him), Owen Wilson and Léa Seydoux. The narrative’s Russian doll framing devices pop open to reveal a film that offers yet more doors and corridors – a kind of endlessly unfolding Advent calendar, with tantalising surprises hiding behind each window.
As such, it’s an infinitely rewatchable treat let down only by what Mary Berry might call the plot’s ‘soggy middle’ involving will disputes and prison breaks. Above all, it has a tenderness and delicate melancholy that suggests Anderson, for all his precious childhood nostalgia, is finally becoming interested in unlocking not just his toy box but our hearts.