Cannes 2025: Wes Anderson ratchets up the whimsy in The Phoenician Scheme, doesn't stick the landing

Indian Express

20-05-2025

If whimsy had an address, it would be Wes Anderson, whose confections can either delight or dismay. His Cannes competition entry The Phoenician Scheme has nestled firmly into the latter for me: his latest flight of fancy, quite literally, with his lead character traversing the skies in a private jet, being ejected at regular intervals, turns the film into a survival manual.
The film is set in the 50s. Benicio Del Toro plays Zsa Zsa Korda, a wealthy businessman who has a half-brother (Benedict Cumberbatch, almost unrecognisable under a thatched beard), a daughter who is a nun, and nine sons. If Korda wasn't properly eccentric, he wouldn't be a Wes character: accordingly, he decides to bequeath his empire to Liesl (Mia Threapleton), whether she likes it or not.
His current preoccupation lies somewhere in the Middle East, and off they jump into the jet, along with Bjorn (Michael Cera), a young Norwegian expert on all manner of creepy crawlies, who has been hired as tutor to his offspring. We never know why Bjorn is not left behind in Korda's mansion to fulfil his duties, but then, in a Wes movie, you know better than to ask why because along the way, there is usually much delectation as to sets and costumes and characters declaiming their lines.
All of it is here. One of the bathrooms in Korda's mansions that we spend a great deal of time in, with the man himself in a tub, is lensed from the top, so we have a lot of time to observe the precision with which everything else is laid out, including a bottle of bubbly in a bidet. Then there is the plane itself, all very pastel except for the hand grenades found in various hidden places, just before everything goes boom, and Korda and his cohorts find themselves, once more, having miraculously survived an assassination attempt.
Speaking of which, one of Liesl's burning questions to her father is whether he had her mother, his third (or fourth?) wife, murdered. He demurs, but you don't quite believe him. And neither does she.
In a while, the gang finds themselves sinking baskets in an underground tunnel with a couple of suspicious fellows (Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston). To make things a little more inclusive, Riz Ahmed shows up in a thin moustache (a constant in a Wes film). In some cavern-like nightclub, the jovial Mathieu Amalric comes in a cameo, to save the company from a bandit attack.
There's Scarlett Johansson too in a cameo, playing Korda's second cousin with a whole scene to herself, where she is proposed to. The story turns back to Korda, and a late coda, which I liked more than most of the film.
You do get the underlying message — about the dangers of rich billionaires with no scruples wanting to get their greedy paws on more of the planet. We have enough of those here and now, wasting precious resources and ruining the environment. But it doesn't land as much as it could have, in all the preciousness.
Part of the charm of a Wes Anderson enterprise is to discover the degree to which Wes has out-Wes'd himself. In The Phoenician Scheme, he ratchets the whimsy to such an extent that you feel a much greater distance from the goings-on, on screen.