Take your hands off my Lobby Boy – First trailer for Wes Anderson’s latest arrives

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The idea that auteur director Wes Anderson might craft a film too far afield from his seemingly bottomless wellspring of quirky, ensemble comedy milieu is perhaps vulgar at this point on his well-worn path, but the giant cast aside (from Adrien Brody to Owen Wilson) his latest, The Grand Budapest Hotel, feels like an effort that is more focused on one character and one relationship than anything he has produced since 1998’s brilliant coming of age comedy Rushmore.

Ralph Fiennes’ revered hotel manager and slick, anti-ageist ladies man takes center stage in the film’s first trailer, released today. Narrated by Fiennes’ protégé, a young immigrant and “Lobby Boy” in training, this preview introduces the dysfunctional mentorship at the heart of the story while the battle for a stolen Renaissance painting, a family fortune and the affections of a young woman, played by Saoirse Ronan, rave on.

With an alternately haughty and obtuse persona that recalls hints of Gene Hackman’s Royal Tenenbaum, Fiennes slides into the director’s unique mold with ease, and provides an enticing core for the zany antics sure to orbit his never dull epicenter of oddball hospitality. The trailer features vivid colors, geometric camera angles and framing, and clever turns of phrase among other now-classic Anderson attributes.

Set between World Wars I and II, this is Anderson’s second period picture after 2012’s mid-’60s set runaway comedy Moonrise Kingdom. The Grand Budapest Hotel also stars Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Edward Norton and Willem Dafoe, and the film is slated for a March 7 release.

Watch the trailer below: