Hello Sophie Monks Kaufman, this is Wes.” In his slow, warm, contemplative drawl, my name sounds better than ever before. I am in seat 17C of easyjet flight K54K39S which is rolling down a runway at Nice Côte d’Azur Airport. I had switched my phone off flight mode in the hope of receiving a message that would stoke my excitement about being in the French Riviera for the 76th Cannes Film Festival. Even in this anticipatory state, a voice memo from Wes Anderson was beyond anything that it would occur to me to expect.
His latest film, Asteroid City, is set during the 1950s in a fictional American desert town named Arid Plans that has drawn out-of-towners for the Junior Stargazers convention. The Stargazers, all precocious child geniuses, bring with them a more raggedy crew of adults with barely concealed emotional problems. Among them is war photographer Augie Steenbeck (Jason Schwartzman) who has yet to break the news to his four children that their mother is dead. There is another layer to the film in that it is framed as a theatre play written by louche Southern playwright Conrad Earp (Edward Norton) and directed by the oversexed and freshly divorced Schubert Greene (Adrien Brody).
is perhaps the most emotionally naked film that Anderson has ever made and has instantly joined, and as one of my favourites from his relatively small canon. Yet every single thing he has ever made (including the adverts) has a playfulness that underlies all the very best experiences that this life has to offer. Not least, in the character and place names. It makes me feel very warm indeed to imagine Wes and collaborators sitting around cooking up names like Schubert Greene and Conrad Earp, or Arid Plains and Parched Gulp. He is serious about entertainment and has built a real livelihood rooted in the world of make believe, much like Schubert Greene and Conrad Earp, who are technically responsible for everything that comes to pass during .
