Cannes 2025: ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ – the very worst of Wes Anderson
The days of both style and substance are now over, an alarming fact that has become increasingly evident after the likes of Emerald Fennell and Ali Abbasi have found fame through vapid but oh so pretty films, proudly destroying the validity of the medium and purpose of cinema – to share a story. However, while we can slam them for perpetuating this style, they weren’t the ones who created it, with many directors before them forging reputations on their ability to make beautiful yet empty stories in which the style supposedly infers substance, whether it be Wong Kar-Wai, Terrence Malick or Christopher Nolan.
While some lack in style and others have an abundance of it, Wes Anderson is a director who has at times, briefly toed the line between both, with earlier works like The Grand Budapest Hotel, Moonrise Kingdom and Fantastic Mr. Fox showing brief flashes of genius as each filmmaking element merges together in a perfect cocktail of lush visuals, likeable characters and a captivating story. From the delightful chaos of The Grand Budapest Hotel to the cheeky charm of George Clooney’s voice acting as Mr. Fox, Anderson’s early work was a true triumph of creativity, with stories that captured our hearts and appealed to the senses through his twee aesthetic and deadpan sense of humour.
But at this point in his career, Wes Anderson’s films feel like caricatures of Wes Anderson films, with the director veering away from substance and leaning into the aesthetics of his style, slowly losing a grip on the stories and instead becoming a hollow parade of pastels and production design. The plot has become a backdrop to increasingly lucrative visual feats, with Anderson deploying all forces to create the most Anderson-looking sets, but with characters that bear no resemblance to the vibrant eccentrics who fleshed out his former films.
As a result, Anderson has not made a truly good film in years, with Asteroid City being the last work to come close, adding emotional texture to a story about grief and crumbling familial relationships that is almost equally ornate in style and feeling. However, his latest film, The Phoenician Scheme, starring Benicio del Toro and Mia Threapleton, is sadly not a step in the right direction, with Anderson returning to frustratingly familiar territory and embarking on another odyssey of ostentation, with very little beneath the surface to sink your teeth into.
Despite the fact that the film has not yet been released, many people are praising Anderson for assembling what is described as the most Anderson-esque cast to date, with the director uniting old and new faces such as Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hanks, Bill Murray alongside Michael Cera, Mia Threapleton, Riz Ahmed and Bryan Cranston. At the press conference for the film, Cumberbatch described his joy at seeing Cera and Anderson working together, saying, “Wes discovering Michael was like God discovering water”. But even a stellar cast can’t elevate a beautiful pile of nothing, with the visuals unfortunately being the standout element from an annoyingly flat story.
The Phoenician Scheme follows Zsa-zsa Korda on a journey to reconnect with his daughter by naming her as the sole heir to his estate and involving her in his various business schemes before his death, suspecting that he will soon be assassinated. It is easy to be swept up in the quirky charm of the story at the beginning, especially after not having watched one of his films in a while, but after about 30 minutes, it became starkly clear that it would not evolve past the limitations of the trap that Anderson has been working in for many years.
Despite the fact that there are a few jokes and amusing moments, mostly coming from Michael Cera, who could not be more perfect as the ‘Norwegian’ insect expert, it shortly feels repetitive and stiff, with nothing funny enough in the story to make the stuffy dialogue style even vaguely entertaining. The plot chugs along and grasps at new beats to justify its existence, but it feels entirely unmotivated and uncompelling, with no emotional depth to the central relationship to make us care about anything happening on screen.
After a while, I felt extremely irritated by the empty grandeur of a director who has so much power that he doesn’t seem to factor storytelling into his films, instead hashing out a narrative that acts as a prop to support his increasingly excessive visuals. Sure, it looks good, but is the bar really that low? Anderson is supposedly the most accomplished auteur working today, but to me, he’s nothing but an old hack, and it would do him well to hang up his hat for a while and think really hard about a story that is worth sharing.
