An AWOL Khaki Scout and his sweetheart
commit probably the most adorable elopement ever put on screen in Wes
Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, the latest in the auteur's
ever-growing portfolio of exacting comedies, wherein subdued youthful
angst and emotional exploration manifest themselves in a case of love
on the run, sending shock waves through the cozily contained island
community of New Penzance.
The two absconders in question are
12-year-olds Sam and Suzy, exquisitely played by newcomers Jared
Gilman and Kara Hayward with a precocious, self-aware deadpan
intended to serve Anderson and cowriter Roman Coppola's deliberately
eccentric dialogue. He, an orphan who can't seem to make friends even
among his fellow Khaki Scouts as they're so called (not to be
confused with Baden-Powell's boys), and she, frustrated and smothered
by a family composed of three banal brothers and lawyer parents who
parley in legal jargon without a trace of irony or affection, have in
common that they're both social outsiders, and both may be, as others
perceive them to be, “emotionally disturbed” – but really, who
wasn't at that age? Perhaps emotionally curious is a better way of
summing it up, after a chance meeting at a church pageant followed
by an intimate pen pal correspondence prompts them one summer to
runaway together, certain that whatever existence they forge for
themselves in the coastal wilderness of their island home will be
happier than the ones they currently lead.
