With his feature output enters two digits (ASTEROID CITY is his 11th), Wes Anderson seems to double down on pursuing a formalism that takes him further to his aesthetic purity. THE FRENCH DISPATCH (2021) is a volley of Gallic drollness and idiosyncrasy paying homage to the New Yorker magazine in its distinct form and composition, yet each chapter coruscates with a stimulating story to shore up the rigid modus operandi, which one cannot say the same in ASTEROID CITY.

On a meta-textual blueprint, the film’s center story is a re-enactment of a play set in a retro-futuristic 1950s (its pastel hues are unexpectedly scrumptious), a desert town called Asteroid City, not far from atomic test sites, where five junior stargazers and their respective guardians, military and corporate figures, a woman scientist (Swinton, or who else?), a group of pupils and their teacher, a cowboy band plus a handful of local folks are convened together. After an otherworldly materialization of a particularly lanky extraterrestrial descending from a UFO then absconding with the remaining piece of an asteroid (which gives the town its name) during the ceremony, military quarantine and government cover-up is only to be expected.

While the teenage brainiacs are the constant purveyors of surprises, amazement and dry humor (a contest of their tenacious retentions is a Andersonesque wheeze in its most singular potency), their adult counterparts are languishing (or sweltering) under the desert sun. Among which, war photographer Augie Steenbeck (a woebegone Schwartzman) is the nominal lead, whose balancing act between grieving over his dead wife and courtship towards actress Midge Campbell (Johansson, whose world-weary detachment and impassive snappiness makes her the best among the star-studded ensemble, but since it is a Wes Anderson picture, that is merely point-scoring) never really take off with any momentum. Since the emotional anchor doesn’t function properly, ASTEROID CITY is mostly marooned in a sea of flotsam and jetsam, only jolts audience into wonderment, literally twice, with the WTF appearance of the alien.

The film’s frame story, shot in a black-and-white Academy ratio, punctures the colorful main narrative with backstories about the play’s author Conrad Earp (Norton) and a live reproduction of the play with the same actors, where disruption awaits in the wings (is it the first time a Dutch angle pops up in an Anderson film?). The treatment about authorship and performative insecurity is floated but not satisfactorily resolved.

All in all, Anderson may have reaped more leeway in his autonomy of his creation, but what he attempts to bequeath audience through his inimitable vision and style remains vague in the case of ASTEROID CITY. It is intellectual only for intellectual’s sake, his seemingly ineluctable formalistic quest needs some far more intriguing ballast to match the geometrically pleasing, chromatically soothing visuals, the deadpan, rat-a-tat delivery, the ever-stage-bound mise en scène and blocking. A solution could be brought by the fetching tetralogy of his adaptation of Roald Dahl’s short stories, THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR, THE SWAN, THE RAT CATCHER and POISON, all released in late 2023, in which Dahl’s hyperbolically vicious, rapturously suspenseful vibes might be exactly what Anderson should apply for his next project.

referential entries: Anderson’s THE FRENCH DISPATCH (2021, 8.0/10); MOONRISE KINGDOM (2012, 7.8/10); THE FANTASTIC MR. FOX (2009, 8.2/10).

Title: Asteroid City

Year: 2023

Country: USA

Language: English

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Sci-Fi

Director/Screenwriter: Wes Anderson

Music: Alexandre Desplat

Cinematography: Robert D. Yeoman

Editor: Barney Pilling

Cast:

Jason Schwartzman

Jake Ryan

Scarlett Johansson

Grace Edwards

Tom Hanks

Jeffrey Wright

Tilda Swinton

Bryan Cranston

Edward Norton

Adrien Brody

Liev Schreiber

Aristou Meehan

Hope Davis

Sophia Lillis

Steve Park

Ethan Josh Lee

Rupert Friend

Maya Hawke

Steve Carell

Matt Dillon

Hong Chau

Willem Dafoe

Margot Robbie

Tony Revolori

Jeff Goldblum

Fisher Stevens

Rita Wilson

Jarvis Cocker

Bob Balaban

Seu Jorge

Deanna Dunagan

Rating: 7.6/10