Wes Anderson’s ‘Asteroid City’ baffles to exasperation with an all-star cast

“The important thing is not to understand but that it is beautiful”, said Godard. All right. If Wes Anderson (The Grand Budapest Hotell) has accustomed us to the most twisted scenarios in stylized stagings with five-star castings, he pushes the cork a little far in Asteroid City, starring Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Jason Schwartzman, Adrian Brody and Margot Robbie, out Wednesday, June 21.

So far, so good

In 1955, Asteroid City, a tiny boom town in the middle of a desert in the southwestern United States, is famous for its gigantic antediluvian meteorite crater. For a weekend, five gifted children are invited to present their inventions, while many other people cross paths in the greatest confusion. When a spaceship arrives with an alien who steals the remains of the meteor, all these beautiful people are quarantined.

Wes Anderson sets the scene starting from a theater scene where the author of the play launches the story in several acts. From black and white and square image format, we move on to color and the usual graphic style of the director, against a backdrop of country music that will hardly ever leave the film. So far, so good. When the many protagonists arrive, the action becomes more and more confused and deliberately incoherent, between zaniness and nonsense.

divisive

The absurdity ofAsteroid City can irritate. Wes Anderson plays with this narrative provocation to shake up conventions and the spectators who await the many stars of the film. But they risk having a nightmare by undergoing what one of the characters in the film repeats at leisure: “I still don’t understand the part“. Place of a crater, of a hole, the city which gives its title to the film, Asteroid City, is built on a vacuum. As the film is devoid of narration and dramaturgy by linking numbers, scenes, without plot or link, including the extraterrestrial.

If one can like this subtle genre, it also has its limits, and here comes close to navel-gazing, even the cynicism of a divisive inter-self. We will recognize the sophisticated and shimmering imagery ofAsteroid City, nostalgic and cartoonish of the golden age of the American 50s. The glamor of the cast and the quirky humor that runs through it is charming at times. But the film risks causing what an irritated spectator launched at the end of the screening in Cannes where the film was in competition: “I’m never going to see a Wes Anderson movie again”.

The sheet

Gender : Comedy
Director: Wes Anderson
Actors: Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Tilda Swinton, Adrian Brody, Margot Robbie, Ruper Friend, Matt Dillon
Country : UNITED STATES
Duration : 1h45
Exit : June 21, 2023
Distributer : Universal Pictures International France