Personal style: it means a lot to Wes Anderson. From Rushmore to The Royal Tenenbaums, his films ooze it, from the costumes and production design right down to the elegant fonts on those ornate title cards. So it's no surprise that when Anderson, 43, walks into the Carlton Beach restaurant in Cannes, he's elegantly attired in a rust-coloured corduroy suit. Inside his jacket pocket is a neatly folded newspaper; Anderson is not a man who looks likely to embrace the iPad revolution anytime soon.
Indeed, his latest film - like so many of his others - is awash with nostalgia for a bygone era. Set in 1965, Moonrise Kingdom is set around a local community on a small archipelago off the coast of Rhode Island. With America having witnessed the shocking assassination of JFK two years earlier, and with the Vietnam War under way, Anderson saw it as a tipping point. "I started to think 1965 was the end of an innocent period of American social life - the end of an innocent season in America."
Not that Moonrise Kingdom is political - far from it. But it is a film that deals in the end of innocence, albeit in the most gentle fashion. At its heart is Sam (Jared Gilman), a 12-year-old orphan Boy Scout who feels like a cousin to Rushmore's precocious protagonist Max Fischer. Drawn to local girl Suzy (Kara Hayward), he entices her to run away with him, an act that sends her parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand) into spasms and leads the local sheriff (Bruce Willis) and the scoutmaster (Edward Norton) to organise the search team.
"The children in this story are the ones that know what they want, more than the adults," says Anderson. "They're maybe a little more efficient in getting what they're after. They don't allow anything to stop them from doing what they want."
This being a Wes Anderson film, however, it's all very tasteful and chaste. "It's a fairly low, innocent degree of sexuality, if you even want to call it that," says Norton. "They're dancing to Françoise Hardy [the song Le Temps de l'Amour] in their underwear!"
You might just retitle the film Paradise Found, as these prepubescents bathe in the flush of first love, with Anderson drawing from the Benjamin Britten operatic adaptation of Shakespeare's evergreen love story A Midsummer Night's Dream. "[It was] my memory of the emotion … a feeling like you've fallen in love at that age," he says. "That's sort of the inspiration for the whole thing."
For a long time, Anderson stalled on the idea, until in came Roman Coppola, the son of Francis and one of Anderson's co-writers on his 2007 India-set The Darjeeling Limited. "Before he came to help me, I had only 15 pages for the script," Anderson says. "I was struggling to make it into a story." Adds Coppola: "He had all these images, notions and feelings, but it was just bottled up." A series of workshop sessions saw Coppola question Anderson. Like a therapist? "I wouldn't use that word," says Coppola, "but it's not dissimilar."
What emerged was a story that once again sees Anderson study family life, a perennial theme across his seven films to date. There are some beautiful details - note the way McDormand's mother rounds up her kids with a megaphone - and there are some poignant ones. Glimpsed in the film, Anderson remembers finding a pamphlet on his own refrigerator entitled Coping with the Very Troubled Child. "I wasn't the only child in the house, but I knew which one was the very troubled child. And I think if my brothers [Eric and Mel] had found it they would not have looked to themselves. It's not a great feeling."
He grew up in Houston, Texas, where his father ran an advertising and PR firm and his mother worked in real estate. They divorced when he was eight, and Anderson became a problem child at school. But then he discovered film and began making mini Super 8mm movies in his backyard. "They were really terrible," he laughs. "That was at my most pretentious age. One of them was all about philosophers. That was bad news. That's where you're in trouble. An ensemble of eight characters, all philosophers ... it had action in it."
He met Owen Wilson at the University of Texas, and the two became writing partners on Anderson's 1996 debut Bottle Rocket. Wilson and his brothers, Luke and Andrew, were the first to join Anderson's ever-expanding repertory of actors - one that now includes Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman and Anjelica Huston. But, from Edward Norton to Bruce Willis, Anderson is always willing to expand his family. "Bruce Willis, I liked the idea of using his persona," says Anderson. "He's a policeman, but he's a lonely, sad, insecure policeman. No Die Hard. Just a taste of it."
Whether it's behind the camera or in front, if Anderson's films are all about the creation of families, surrogate or otherwise, it's curious that he's yet to start one of his own. "I've wanted to have children before," he says, a little sadly, "but not yet." In the past he's said, "If I wasn't so involved with these movies", he might already have kids, the impression being he's put his art before his personal life.
"Wes is trying so hard to live a life that is his own," says Schwartzman. "A life where you can fight convention." There's no better way of summing him up.
Moonrise Kingdom opens across the UAE today
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if you go
The flights Fly Dubai, Air Arabia, Emirates, Etihad, and Royal Jordanian all offer direct, three-and-a-half-hour flights from the UAE to the Jordanian capital Amman. Alternatively, from June Fly Dubai will offer a new direct service from Dubai to Aqaba in the south of the country. See the airlines’ respective sites for varying prices or search on reliable price-comparison site Skyscanner.
The trip
Jamie Lafferty was a guest of the Jordan Tourist Board. For more information on adventure tourism in Jordan see Visit Jordan. A number of new and established tour companies offer the chance to go caving, rock-climbing, canyoning, and mountaineering in Jordan. Prices vary depending on how many activities you want to do and how many days you plan to stay in the country. Among the leaders are Terhaal, who offer a two-day canyoning trip from Dh845 per person. If you really want to push your limits, contact the Stronger Team. For a more trek-focused trip, KE Adventure offers an eight-day trip from Dh5,300 per person.
What is a black hole?
1. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so strong not even light can escape their pull
2. They can be created when massive stars collapse under their own weight
3. Large black holes can also be formed when smaller ones collide and merge
4. The biggest black holes lurk at the centre of many galaxies, including our own
5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed
SCORES
Yorkshire Vikings 144-1 in 12.5 overs
(Tom Kohler 72 not out, Harry Broook 42 not out)
bt Hobart Hurricanes 140-7 in 20 overs
(Caleb Jewell 38, Sean Willis 35, Karl Carver 2-29, Josh Shaw 2-39)
The specs
Engine: Long-range single or dual motor with 200kW or 400kW battery
Transmission: Single-speed automatic
Max touring range: 620km / 590km
Price: From Dh250,000 (estimated)
What is an ETF?
An exchange traded fund is a type of investment fund that can be traded quickly and easily, just like stocks and shares. They come with no upfront costs aside from your brokerage's dealing charges and annual fees, which are far lower than on traditional mutual investment funds. Charges are as low as 0.03 per cent on one of the very cheapest (and most popular), Vanguard S&P 500 ETF, with the maximum around 0.75 per cent.
There is no fund manager deciding which stocks and other assets to invest in, instead they passively track their chosen index, country, region or commodity, regardless of whether it goes up or down.
The first ETF was launched as recently as 1993, but the sector boasted $5.78 billion in assets under management at the end of September as inflows hit record highs, according to the latest figures from ETFGI, a leading independent research and consultancy firm.
There are thousands to choose from, with the five largest providers BlackRock’s iShares, Vanguard, State Street Global Advisers, Deutsche Bank X-trackers and Invesco PowerShares.
While the best-known track major indices such as MSCI World, the S&P 500 and FTSE 100, you can also invest in specific countries or regions, large, medium or small companies, government bonds, gold, crude oil, cocoa, water, carbon, cattle, corn futures, currency shifts or even a stock market crash.
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RESULTS
5pm: Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan Racing Festival Purebred Arabian Cup Conditions (PA) Dh 200,000 (Turf) 1,600m
Winner: Hameem, Adrie de Vries (jockey), Abdallah Al Hammadi (trainer)
5.30pm: Sheikha Fatima bint Mubarak Cup Conditions (PA) Dh 200,000 (T) 1,600m
Winner: Winked, Connor Beasley, Abdallah Al Hammadi
6pm: Sheikh Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan National Day Cup Listed (TB) Dh 380,000 (T) 1,600m
Winner: Boerhan, Ryan Curatolo, Nicholas Bachalard
6.30pm: Sheikh Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan National Day Group 3 (PA) Dh 500,000 (T) 1,600m
Winner: AF Alwajel, Tadhg O’Shea, Ernst Oertel
7pm: Sheikh Sultan bin Zayed Al Nahyan National Day Jewel Crown Group 1 (PA) Dh 5,000,000 (T) 2,200m
Winner: Messi, Pat Dobbs, Timo Keersmaekers
7.30pm: Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan Racing Festival Handicap (PA) Dh 150,000 (T) 1,400m
Winner: Harrab, Ryan Curatolo, Jean de Roualle
8pm: Wathba Stallions Cup Handicap (PA) Dh 100,000 (T) 1,400m
Winner: AF Alareeq, Connor Beasley, Ahmed Al Mehairbi