The Grand Budapest Hotel: a terrific confection

It's set in Eastern Europe before the wars, it's beautiful to look at and it becomes very funny. It made me long to go to E. Europe again, even though it isn't really in an E. European country; it's a kind of fictional composite. Here is nostalgia within nostalgia: nostalgia for Communist bloc tacky, with its own streaks of integrity - maybe artistic integrity in the face of state oppression - and nostalgia for Imperial grandeur and the old nobility with its unapologetically eccentric characters. Also nostalgia for a filmstyle we have lost and the 1930's wacky comedies - I kept thinking of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin but this is just because my knowledge of films of this period is very slight. I liked the Jeff Goldblum character, who ran away from danger to a Kunstmuseum, but was followed by Willem Dafoe's ghastly ruthless assassin with his trousers at half mast.   You don't need it to be deep. It's just fun and lovely and beautifully made - like a cake from Mendl's.