A new Cannes Film Festival and a new Wes Anderson film in Official Competition, escorted by its traditional array of American and French stars! - Our very own Mathieu Amalric. In The Pheonician Scheme, Benicio Del Toro plays Anatole 'Zsa-zsa' Korda, a wealthy industrial magnate (and more), a notorious swindler (he likes to manipulate markets and eliminate his competitors), who repeatedly escapes assassination attempts aboard his personal plane (he's already crashed 6 times).
Weary, he decides to give the keys to the store to his daughter Liesl(Mia Threapleton, Kate Winslet's daughter) as she prepares to enter the priesthood. She accepts, willy-nilly, driven by the need to know the truth about her mother's death at the hands of her father.
And so begins a journey through the independent Kingdom of Great Phoenicia (don't look it up on a map, it's fictional) to convince his father's financial partners to cover the financial deficit of a major upcoming project, the last of his life as a boss, each stage of which is contained in shoeboxes.
Along the way, the father, his daughter and their guardian Bjorn(a truculentMichael Sera) must also thwart assassination attempts and contracts put on their heads by a summit of world leaders intent on sabotaging his business interests and looting his assets.
Did you follow? Have you understood? If all this seems at best nebulous, at worst muddled, it's precisely because The Phoenician Scheme is scripturally capillotacked and loses itself in a plot that's hard to follow. Launched at triple gallop, the film relies less than usual on the blissful contemplation of the pop shots and choreography that are the genius of the American filmmaker than ongalloping action... to the point of breathlessness.
For while the journey to the far reaches of the Great Phoenicia allows us to meet some of Anderson's favorite actors (Scarlett Johansson, Jeffrey Wright) and enjoy some very funny scenes (the hilarious basketball game with Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston), these moments sometimes feel like a stack of snapshots that don't communicate with each other.
Fortunately, the father-daughter relationship between Benicio Del Toro and Mia Threapleton succeeds in channeling the whole and filling this otherwise rather disembodied work with feeling.
The Phoenician Scheme will be shown on the big screen from May 28, 2025.
Synopsis: The story of a family and its business.
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