A galaxy of Hollywood stars, led by Wes Andersen (Houston 1969) paraded down the red carpet of the Cannes Film Palace yesterday and managed to grab the croisette and their fans’ balconies. Tom Hanks, Adrien Brody, Scarlett Johanson, Edward Norton, Matt Dillon, Bryan Cranston, Jason Schzartsman and an infinite number of known names of the Galaxyas usual in the cinema of the filmmaker, dazzling as they entered the Lumiere Room, as the audience awaited them with standing ovations.

Recorded two years ago in Chinchón (a town near Madrid), the new audiovisual jewel of Anderson presents us with two narrative shots to tell us a story of Martians in the American Midwest, shot on Spanish territory. It begins with Cranston, which recounts the genesis of a Brody theatrical show that will later become the movie we’ll see, with lead actors (if you can speak of ensemble film leads with minimal appearances for each star) such as Hanks and johnson. It is the story of a group of people gathered in a lost city in the desert for a prize dedicated to young astronomers and space cadets. Everything starts from the time of the asteroid that hit Earth 3000 years BC.

The film again tests the mastery of Wes Andersen, its eccentric elegance and its fantastic refinement of dimensions, its attention to every detail and its colors, sometimes pastels, sometimes luminous, and for the storyboards that accompany the symmetry. This time, Asteroid City one work within another: it begins with the rebroadcast for television of a successful theater play, which gives the title to the film. The whole is divided into three acts and an epilogue.

The story is set in the Midwest, in the summer of 1955, around a bungalow motel, where a war photographer, a widower with four children, a famous movie star, a grandfather who saves his family, and others who line up for a huge crater caused by another asteroid. On this special night, an alien lands in front of the whole city who steals this very special stone under everyone’s nose and flees, creating an unquestionable quarantine in the city.

johnson He began his speech by describing the work done for the production and how it felt to be immersed in the director’s vision, style and spirit, comparing it to the theater by providing a tangible, solid, usable space. to have. Comment supported by Maya Hawkeplaying a teacher. “The process and the final product come together beautifully in this film,” she said.

“It was a real challenge to focus and do it. felt Wes Andersen like the conductor of an orchestra and all of us like the interpreters of a particular instrument and we had to hyper-focus on our instrument not knowing how everything is going to fit together and who goes first and then so that later he will adjust it’ said Bryan Cranston on the filming process.

About the alien landing in the city and about his belief in these events Anderson he said between laughs, “Well, there’s no way I’d trust my opinion on the meaning of that subject.” “The research that was done on it was so extensive that you couldn’t find it easily.” “Stephen Hawking maintains that it is numerically unlikely that there is no extraterrestrial life. Not really”.

“The special thing about this film is that we trusted each other and worked very closely together. We’d do scenes we didn’t plan for that day and then he’d say, how about doing this, and we’d do it! “It must be very exciting that people are there, night after night, to see what you’ve made,” he added. Wes Anderson. “If I haven’t done a play, it’s because you have to book the theater when rehearsals haven’t started yet, with no option to postpone the premiere if you’re not happy with the end result. But I love going back to the editing table and doing a little bit of checking that everything is okay.” “My way of working is more like that of the 1930s than it is now, the idea of ​​using a green background never crossed my mind, it motivates me to create a real space”. “For this movie, I created a storyboard that was animated in motion, where I could capture all the characters,” he added.

schwartzmanwho knows Anderson since he was 17 years old, he said: “For him every movie is always a whole new challenge and of course he takes what he already knows, elevates it and takes it further, to a new place.”

For cranstonIt’s important to keep moving forward and telling the story because we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, how long our lives will be, who will star in it or how it will all play out. -Referring to the scene in which Augie Steenbeckcharacter played by Jason Schwarzman, appears in black and white and leaves the set very worried and asks the director that he doesn’t understand the play, which is his answer. “You don’t have to understand, it’s just about continuing to tell the story”- Cranston pointed out that he considers this scene to be key in the film.

Finally, Anderson He referred to the musicalization of his films. “Sometimes I’ve had movies where we planned a lot of music. We even film around certain music and then we have the problem that certain spaces remain. This time Alexandre Desplat he started playing just two notes over and over, and then there it was, the full score of the movie. There isn’t much of a score, but I feel like the inspiration has given it a shape that it didn’t have before we started working on it,” the filmmaker concluded.