THE GRAND BUDAPEST HOTEL

Instantly recognisable, and as stylish as Vogue on a very good day, Wes Anderson’s film world is gorgeous, eccentric – and divisive.

There can be few people who don’t love, or at least relish, The Royal Tenenbaums, Anderson’s 2001 masterpiece of family dysfunction, but his last, 2012’s Moonrise Kingdom, was so self-conscious that I eventually gave up and had a nap.

The Grand Budapest Hotel falls towards the Tenenbaums end of the scale, with a wonderful performance from Ralph Fiennes as the hotel’s foul-mouthed luvvie concierge: Monsieur Gustave H.

Anderson’s doll house begins with layers. In the present day, a girl sadly reads a novel called The Grand Budapest Hotel next to a key-covered statue dedicated to a man who looks suspiciously like Ralph Fiennes. In the 1980s, the book’s writer (Tom Wilkinson) tells how he heard the story from the hotel’s owner, Zero Moustafa, in the Grand Budapest itself, during its days as an orange-and-brown design nightmare in the 1960s. The owner in turn tells of Gustave and his lobby boy, the same Zero, back in the 1930s.

Set in the fictional, Nazi Gemany-ish republic of Zubrowka, The Budapest is filled with people of all accents, the richest and most elderly of whom get to ‘feel alive again’ and other euphemisms, with the extremely attentive Gustave.

Tilda Swinton is unrecognisable in grande dame drag as Madame D, one of Gustave’s elderly ladies, who leaves him a priceless painting after her death. Madame’s family, inevitably, object, led by the old woman’s son (Adrien Brody) and his attack dog Jopling (Willem Dafoe, armed with knuckledusters) and Gustave and Zero embark on a crime caper that takes in jail breaks, police chases and shoot-outs.

Someone has given Anderson a swag bag of cash, because The Grand Budapest Hotel has some of his most luxurious sets yet. He has made eye-popping visuals before, particularly on Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited, but whether at Madame D’s house, or the changing, fading grandeur of the hotel, there’s a scale here that’s awe-inspiring. Layer upon layer of visual goodies commence, and layers of cameos: familiar Anderson stalwarts such as Bill Murray and Owen Wilson are all present and correct, along with new faces such as Fiennes, Jude Law as the younger writer, and Tony Revolori as young Zero, instantly making his mark as an Anderson-ite with a pokerfaced turn as Gustave’s straight man, who gets a love interest of his own with Saoirse Ronan’s sweet baker, Agatha.

This is a wonderfully funny film, with Fiennes punching through the stiff 1930s veneer with the best lines. But while this is a film that is easy to like, there isn’t enough here to love. Like the hotel, when Gustave is absent from the screen, the film feels like it’s missing its heart. But as a caper, and perhaps a sop for Anderson naysayers, The Grand Budapest wins through in entertaining style.