Cannes: Wes Anderson’s ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ scores mixed reviews from critics

The breaking news out of the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday was that Wes Anderson made another Wes Anderson movie.

The Oscar-winning director launched The Phoenician Scheme at the prestigious festival, the fourth time Anderson has premiered one of his projects on the French Riviera following Moonrise Kingdom, The French Dispatch, and Asteroid City.

“More linear than Asteroid City or The Grand Budapest Hotel and yet significantly harder to follow than either of them, The Phoenician Scheme is the busiest of Anderson’s films, and also — at least on first viewing — the least rewarding,” wrote Indiewire critic David Ehlrich in his mixed review. It’s a sentiment shared by several top critics.

“The swashbuckling sire, the deadpan ingénue, the sans serif font, the one-point perspective — Anderson’s held fast to his favorite elements even as his canvases have gotten broader and his style even more fastidious,” wrote Vulture critic Alison Wilmore. “But, as was the case with The Grand Budapest Hotel and Asteroid City, which have been some of the most acclaimed films of his career, The Phoenician Scheme left me feeling like he’s broadening rather than growing as an artist, trading the emotional core that has always given his work tangibility for grander ideas.”

“Just when you think that Wes Anderson can't get any more Wes Anderson-ish, he makes a film which takes Wes Anderson-ishness to a whole new level, packing in yet more of the quirks that have become his trademarks: the symmetrical tableaux, the brightly coloured, crisply pressed costumes, the deadpan delivery of proudly artificial dialogue by an ensemble of stars, many of whom are regulars (yes, Bill Murray does appear),” BBC critic Nicholas Barber wrote in his negative take. “Whether viewers of his latest offbeat comedy are Anderson aficionados or Wes-sceptics, they're bound to wonder if the writer-director will ever attempt a project that isn't quite so recognisable.”

Set for release on May 30 with a more expansive bow on June 6, The Phoenician Scheme finds Anderson back with several of his former actors, including lead Benicio del Toro and supporting players Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Jeffrey Wright, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, Mathieu Amalric, and Richard Ayoade. Newcomers to the Anderson universe include Kate Winslet’s daughter, Mia Threapleton, and Michael Cera.

The movie is focused on del Toro’s Zsa-zsa Korda, one of the wealthiest men in Europe and a possible war criminal for whom dodging attempts on his life has become second nature. (The movie, as shown in the film’s trailer, opens with Zsa-zsa surviving a terrorist attack on an airplane.) Threapleton plays Korda’s estranged daughter, a nun. Cera is her tutor.

Read on for more reviews from Cannes.

Pete Hammond, Deadline: “This one is particularly refreshing in that, instead of focusing on a number of characters, here it is Benicio del Toro‘s Zsa-Zsa Korda, a shady, uber-wealthy industrialist who dominates the proceedings much the way we saw in other Anderson riffs like The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.”

Lovia Gyarkye, The Hollywood Reporter: “The Phoenician Scheme marks a return for Anderson to the emotionally grounded and intimate narratives that made his more accessible works (like Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom) so popular. Part of the film is inspired by Anderson’s late father-in-law Fouad Malouf (to whom the project is dedicated), and in recent interviews the director has suggested that having his own daughter likely influenced thematic elements of the film.”

Peter Debruge, Variety: “Less conceptually quirky than the eccentric auteur’s recent Asteroid City (with its film-within-a-stage-rehearsal-within-a-Playhouse 90-esque-TV-special meta framing), but no less profound, The Phoenician Scheme once again finds Anderson incorporating existential matters into a seemingly satirical form. Not a frame goes by without myriad comedic details to tickle his audience, and yet beneath it all, the director dares to confront questions of mortality. Front and center here is Korda’s almost Dickensian dilemma: If he’s dedicated all his energy to amassing wealth but missed out on family, what use did his fortune serve?”

Tim Grierson, Screen Daily: “Wes Anderson’s films often feature enterprising, self-reliant men determined to bend the world to their will — only to learn the world has other ideas. Such is the case with The Phoenician Scheme, in which Benicio del Toro plays a ruthless European industrialist foolheartedly launching his boldest-ever business gambit while reuniting with his estranged daughter, a nun he has determined will be his sole heir. This comedy-thriller finds its antihero confronting his own moral failings and his shortcomings as a father, all set against a reliably stunning visual backdrop and no shortage of clever touches. But what’s lacking this time is a grander idea — either narratively or thematically — that would help this Scheme really soar.”

Matt Neglia, Next Best Picture: “There are some who prefer his earlier work and those who do not vibe with his aesthetic at all. But for the most part, Anderson is one of the most beloved filmmakers we have working today. This must be said at the top because his latest film, The Phoenician Scheme, is definitely one of his weaker efforts to date while still retaining his signature flair for balanced images, quirky, fast-paced dialogue, and cooky characters often played by his recurring go-to-actors with the occasional newbie amongst the troupe.”

Kevin Maher, The Times U.K.: “The best Wes Anderson movies work on two levels at once, the head and the heart. The Royal Tenenbaums, for instance, bursts with cerebral allusions to Salinger, Welles and the films of Powell and Pressburger while also exploring the lingering wounds of family life and of love unexpressed. Even the Wes Anderson films that don’t work on the heart level have such head-spinning cleverness that their impact can be dizzying — think of Asteroid City, with its audacious ‘play within a play within a TV show within a movie’ structure. If, however, a Wes Anderson movie doesn’t work on either the head or the heart level, you’re in big trouble. And that takes us to The Phoenician Scheme, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Sunday.”

Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian: “The Phoenician Scheme is enjoyable and executed with Anderson’s usual tremendous despatch, but it is somehow less visually detailed and inspired than some of his earlier work.”