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Winnipeg Free Press

Wes Anderson's Phoenician Scheme falls a little bit flat

Wes Anderson's cinematic obsessions and stylistic quirks are so distinctive, so immediately recognizable that when trailers for his movies are released, it can be hard to figure out whether it's an actual Anderson preview or just another YouTube pastiche. Devotees might see this latest project, his 12th feature film, as Peak Anderson. Doubters, meanwhile, might suggest the 56-year-old auteur has overshot the peak and fallen into self-parody. For those Anderson viewers who find his works alternately brilliant and exasperating — and sometimes both things simultaneously — The Phoenician Scheme will probably end up classified as minor Anderson. Mixing up a mid-20th-century international caper with family dysfunction, the story (co-written with Roman Coppola) is intermittently interesting, and it's underlaid — of course — with exquisite and elaborate visual tableaux. But the charm often feels forced and twee, the artifice frequently hardens into rigidity, and that tricky Andersonian balance of irony and sentiment is way, way off. The Phoenician Scheme seems destined to land near the bottom end of Anderson's up-and-down oeuvre, somewhere around The Darjeeling Limited and Isle of Dogs. Benicio del Toro (who worked with Anderson in The French Dispatch) plays Anatole (Zsa-zsa) Korda, a super-rich plutocrat who made his fortune from various nefarious sources (including but not limited to war profiteering, bribery, theft, tax evasion and possibly murder). Having survived repeated assassination attempts that have him pondering his mortality, Zsa-zsa decides to bequeath his empire to his estranged daughter Liesl (The Buccaneers' Mia Threapleton), a pious novitiate nun. First, Zsa-zsa takes Liesl to visit a massive infrastructure project involving a canal, a tunnel, a railway line and a dam, to be built in the fictional Middle Eastern kingdom of Phoenicia. Zsa-zsa is perhaps hoping to make up for years of paternal neglect, while Liesl wants to ameliorate her father's brand of rapacious capitalism (which includes engineered famines and the use of slave labour). TPS Productions/Focus Features/TNS Benicio del Toro (left) and Mia Threapleton play a formerly estranged father and daughter in Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme. The mismatched father-daughter pair, along with Dr. Bjorn (Michael Cera), a Norwegian tutor who's been drafted as Zsa-zsa's new private secretary after the last one was blown up, then visit the scheme's principal investors. These include two basketball-playing Americans (Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston); Marseille Bob (Mathieu Amalric), a canned fish aficionado and nightclub owner; Marty (Jeffrey Wright), an easygoing shipping magnate; and stern, uber-wealthy Cousin Hilda (Scarlett Johansson). There are tussles with assassins, secret agents and amiable Marxist revolutionaries (led by Richard Ayoade), as well as conflicts with a consortium of besuited bureaucrats (led by Rupert Friend), who are attempting to scupper Zsa-zsa's business by driving up the price of 'Bashable Rivets.' Threapleton gives a grounded performance as one of Anderson's recurring types — the wise, grave young woman — and Cera is a constant daffy delight, whose pure enjoyment of Andersonian caprice spreads to the audience. Unfortunately, del Toro, who is in almost every scene, is flat — and not just Anderson flat, with that trademark deadpan delivery, but oddly empty. There are many of the usual Andersonian tropes — a distant parent attempting a late-life redemption, excellent luggage, obscure books (Fleas of the Americas), gorgeous tilework and wall coverings, and vintage modes of transport. TPS Productions/Focus Features (From left) Mathieu Amalric, Michael Cera, Benicio Del Toro, Mia Threapleton and Jeffrey Wright get tangled up in The Phoenician Scheme. There's a magpie-like collection of cultural references, from the films of Orson Welles to Boys' Own adventure stories. There are starry cameos, including drop-ins by Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg and Bill Murray as God (or vice-versa). There is lots of symmetrical, head-on framing and a gorgeous pastel colour palette of sand, ochre and aqua (last seen in Asteroid City). But does this elegant, eccentric cinematic style add up to much? The film's themes ostensibly involve a socioeconomic look at unfettered capitalism, a philosophical examination of morality, and perhaps an allegory for the process of filmmaking and film financing, but Anderson's extension of these declared ideas feels perfunctory. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. The tone is uneven. There are scenes of slapstick violence that try for antic comedy but don't always come off. But the real problem is the dramatic hollowness. Even amidst their arch artifice, the best of Anderson's films, such as Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Grand Budapest Hotel, tend to be burnished with gentle melancholy, with laments for lost innocence. There is no affective undertow here, and the final scene, which celebrates the modest pleasures of work and family, doesn't have enough emotional heft to work. Even minor Wes Anderson is worth a look. The Phoenician Scheme is watchable, but it's also, sadly, forgettable. Alison GillmorWriter Studying at the University of Winnipeg and later Toronto's York University, Alison Gillmor planned to become an art historian. She ended up catching the journalism bug when she started as visual arts reviewer at the Winnipeg Free Press in 1992. Read full biography Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. 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