Wes Anderson’s twelfth film, “The Phoenician Scheme”, is “the most Andersonian Anderson film to date”, said Robbie Collin in The Telegraph. “Tender, witty” and “wondrous”, it’s a “complete delight”.
The action follows the “rascally European industrialist” Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro), as he embarks on an ambitious infrastructure project in a fictional Middle Eastern desert, while attempting to reconcile with his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton), a nun whom he has chosen to be his sole heir.
Packed with “refreshingly juvenile humour” and arcane literary references, it’s one of Anderson’s “most enrapturing works of recent times”, said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent. As you would expect, the film is a “pictorial treat”, with “exhaustive attention” paid to the costumes and production design. Every scene includes “something to savour”, whether it be “deadpan dialogue” or a “goofy visual gag”.
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One of Anderson’s “funnier” films, the opening scene is a “madcap treat”, said Nicholas Barber on BBC Culture. But the plot “could have been scribbled on the back of the envelope in the small hours of the morning”. Unless your tolerance for Anderson’s “idiosyncrasies” is set “stratospherically high”, odds are the narrative will seem “too random for you to care about by the halfway point”.
“There is not, alas, much for the heart or the head here”, said Kevin Maher in The Times. The director has claimed “The Phoenician Scheme” is his most “sombre” work yet but it’s also his “least engaged”. Liesl and Korda’s relationship develops to little more than a few “inscrutable exchanges” and the “pile-up of empty cameos (Bill Murray as God) in place of emotional traction” soon wears thin.
Still, Mia Threapleton – Kate Winslet‘s daughter – is “sensational”. “Quietly commanding, but always glowing with charisma, she is the discovery here.”
Del Toro also dazzles with his “rarely seen comedic charm”, while Michael Cera is delightfully eccentric as a Swede called Bjørn Lund, said Kaleem Aftab in Time Out. This “unholy triumvirate” is the most “tight-knit group of protagonists” we’ve seen in an Anderson film since “The Darjeeling Limited” in 2007.
All of the ingredients you would expect from “cinema’s most meticulous auteur” are present in spades in this “espionage caper”. But he isn’t afraid to mix things up, injecting his signature style with “dashes of film noir”. In all, watching “The Phoenician Scheme” is like putting together an intricately detailed puzzle: “at times frustrating, but deeply rewarding when the full picture comes together”.
