Cannes 2025 – The Phoenician Scheme: Wes Anderson goes to adventure (critic)
Anderson disturbs his universe a little to make room for Tintin -style tribulations. Both fun and surprisingly dark.
Are you tired of Wes Anderson’s cinema? Fed up with his recent explorations sometimes nostalgic (The French Dispatch), sometimes theoretical (Asteroid City))? The Phoenician Schemein competition at the Cannes Film Festival, could well reconcile with a director still as manic, but who takes pleasure in slightly cracking the mold. It was in 1950 and the wealthy and ruthless industrial anatole “ZSA-ZSA” Korda (the impeccable Benicio Del Toro) has put on several government and competitors. Launched in the last phase of a maritime and terrestrial infrastructure project, he travels from country to country to convince his investors to stay in the blow, while trying to reconnect with his daughter and avoiding the hobby killers launched on him …
A sort of tintin in Andersonian lands, where plots, attempted poisoning and sense of adventure dopy the story. Very comic, very funny (ZSA-Zsa offering a grenade to his guests as we would offer an apple; his repeated “dead”; the basketball scene with Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston …) and above all less well tidy than his two previous films: The Phoenician Scheme A kicks in the dollhouse, advancing at all costs by injecting explosions and chaos. An absurd film on the absurdity of a world populated by violent and navelopers, large kids obsessed with their power.
Wes Anderson is finally like all of us and the Trump era insidiously imbued his imagination. In this specific case, we would not dare to complain about it.
The Phoenician Scheme From Wes Anderson, with Benicio Del Toro, Mia ThreaPleton, Michael Cera… Duration: 1 h 41. May 28 at the cinema.
