film festival
Wes Anderson delights Cannes with a large array of stars
Tom Hanks (lr), Scarlett Johansson, Wes Anderson and Jason Schwartzman pose for the photo
© Daniel Cole/AP
Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwartzman, Tom Hanks, Adrien Brody, Bryan Cranston: These are just some of the movie stars in Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City”. They come to the premiere in a special way.
Director Wes Anderson’s work is usually star-packed, and so is his eleventh feature film. Scarlett Johansson, Jason Schwartzman, Tom Hanks and Adrien Brody join the cast of “Asteroid City,” which premiered in Cannes on Tuesday night.
As in 2021 at the premiere of “The French Dispatch”, the stars drove to the red carpet together in the bus instead of individually in limousines. Bryan Cranston, Maya Hawke and Matt Dillon were also there.
Colors, symmetry and retro look
In the film, for example, Edward Norton, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie and Tilda Swinton are added to the list. “Asteroid City” is a hidden object of stars, and also in the film itself there are many different narrative threads to be connected. Fans of the US director are already familiar with this, as well as his concise visual style, which again comes into its own in “Asteroid City”.
Intense colors, symmetrical worlds and a retro look are part of it. “Asteroid City” is set in 1955 in a small desert town in the American Southwest that looks like a painted backdrop. A group of students and parents meet for the “Junior Stargazer Convention”. There, highly gifted students present their inventions. Atomic bomb tests are taking place in the background.
Augie Steenbeck (Schwartzman) arrives with his four children, and at some point their grandpa (Hanks) will join them. From the window of his bungalow, Steenbeck begins a romance with actress Midge Campbell (Johansson), who accompanies her daughter into the desert.
The student with the most innovative invention will receive a prize on “Asteroid Day”. But while the participants sit together in an impact crater caused by an asteroid for the award ceremony, extraterrestrial forces come into play.
Theater play as a cinema film
This story is framed by a narrative meta-level: “Asteroid City” is actually just a theater play. We see that because the film keeps zooming out of the desert and switching to the theater setting. In the role of narrator, Cranston takes us into the making of this play, written by Norton and directed by Brody.
At one point, Steenbeck moves from the desert city to the theater set to discuss his performance with the director. “Asteroid City” is full of such ideas. With funny dialogues and an unmistakable look, the film is memorable.