Wes Anderson's 'Moonrise Kingdom' Opens The Festival

Festival opener Moonrise Kingdom, Wes Anderson’s follow-up to the Roald Dahl adaptation Fantastic Mr. Fox, is garnering well-deserved attention. The film is classic Anderson, saturated with a splendid vein of melancholic childhood nostalgia. Taking place on an island in New England in 1965 the film follows a pair of childhood lovers who flee their town together and cause an eccentric search party to set out after them.

Along with the usual wistful soundtrack, biting dialogue, and that Anderson trademark — pastel, wide-angle cinematography — the director has strung together another mix of refreshingly familiar cast which includes the likes of Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Edward Norton, Bruce Willis and Tilda Swinton (pictured). “The relationship that is the center of the movie is probably my own feelings at that time and more like my own fantasy at that time,” Anderson explained to Slate.com.

He added: “Secretly this boy and girl run away together, and the things she feels she should have for her survival is a suitcase full of library books — fantasy books. And somewhere along the way I started thinking maybe the movie ought to feel like it could be in that suitcase with the rest of those books. It’s the desire of 12 year olds to have their imagination, or their fantasies, be real and the way, sometimes, they think they are.”

—SIOBHAN MCBRIDE

Watch the trailer for Moonrise Kingdom here: