Whatever Wes Anderson is doing, it might be better classified as art rather than cinema. This was confirmed when he received invitations from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, and the Fondazione Prada in Milan, to create exhibitions from 2018 to 2020. The Prada had already shown its affection for the director by getting him to design a bar in 2015. It feels, unsurprisingly, as if one is drinking in a set from one of Anderson’s movies.

Asteroid City is Anderson’s 11th feature since his debut in 1996, and it may be his strangest, most elaborate production yet. For those who were overwhelmed by the wall-to-wall whimsy of The French Dispatch (2021) or The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), this will present an alarming prospect. For the past decade, Anderson has asked viewers the question: “How much is too much?”