The Film: Check in and check out

I am a devout fan of the films of Wes Anderson, the most singularly stylish, literary-minded filmmaker in the US.

His work is characterised by hermetically sealed worlds populated by oddball, intelligent characters living among piles of nostalgic remnants of the bygone mechanical age.

With The Grand Budapest Hotel, Anderson repeats many of his familiar themes, utilises much of his stock company of actors and explores ideas around fraternity and family that are often at the heart of his films. He also brings a zany intensity and acknowledgement of broader historical forces that have been absent in his other work, which makes this his best film since The Royal Tenenbaums.

It is a multilayered narrative of humour tinged with a sense of loss at the passing of the poise and manners of an old-world Europe destroyed by the onset of fascism and the stifling dreariness of Stalinism. The film's construction is a delicate confection that replicates the carefully baked pastries that form an integral part of its story.

Beginning in the 1980s with a nameless author (Tom Wilkinson) relating the story of how his novel The Grand Budapest Hotel came to be written, we then flash back to the late 1960s to a hotel that is a tacky brutalist shadow of its former glory, chosen by the author's younger self (Jude Law) as a place to write.

Here he meets the owner of the Grand Budapest Hotel, Mr Moustafa, who, over one of those multi-course wine-paired dinners that nobody eats anymore, tells the author the story of how he came to own the hotel when it was still the crown jewel of the fictional republic of Zubrowska.

In those days it was a spa hotel frequented by elderly socialite heiresses and watched over by its legendary concierge, the pencil-moustached Monsieur Gustave (Ralph Fiennes). At that time Moustafa was simply a lobby boy known as Zero (Tony Revolori), learning at the feet of Monsieur Gustave the virtues of civilisation and personal attention, which in Gustave's case included servicing the sexual needs of his geriatric clientele. When one of them dies, leaving a valuable painting to Gustave, the lady's fascist sons see red and come after the concierge with the fury of Achilles.

What follows is a razor-sharp, whip-smart piece of farce - held together by a masterful performance by Fiennes, who exercises his comic talents to full effect. He is brilliantly supported by a cast of Anderson regulars who pop in and out - Billy Murray, Bob Balaban, Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman, and a menacingly mincing Willem Dafoe.

It is beautifully designed and shot - and thoughtful. It is a sign that Anderson is getting a tighter rein on his storytelling abilities, growing up without losing his distinctive personality.

When: Opening tonight

Where: Cinemas nationally

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