Alessandra Montterastelli
All the emotions that were airing in “Asteroid City”, a film presented by Wes Anderson at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023, fell like a meteor in “The Phoenician Scheme”, the director’s new feature that competes for the Golden Palm this year.
Despite the melancholy that permeated the characters in “Asteroid City,” the core of the movie was a fable about staging stories, and how narratives can change depending on the point of view.
Very well executed, the coldest concept, as it were, did not please everyone. In “The Phoenician Scheme”, on the other hand, the plot is highly emotional – dramatic exaggerations – sustained by a dysfunctional relationship between father and daughter.
The story begins with the explosion of a bomb on the private plane that carries the tycoon Zsa-Zsa Korda, embodied by a Benicio Del Toro who is in full shape, since “the French chronicle”, to support the film’s protagonism. His character is a mixture of the European Businessman, such as Aristotle Onassis, and Anderson’s father -in -law -an expansive Lebanese patriarch and at the same time somewhat scary.
Korda is dodging multiple attempts at murder, and decides to resort to her only daughter-but nine boys-not only to succeed him if the worst happens, but also to help him get the most megalomaniac venture out of his life, a gigantic structure in the wilderness.
All the ingredients to La Anderson are there -the millimetrically constructed scenarios, symmetrical plans and eccentric and comical characters in their pain, which combined carry the observer to a half -fantastic parallel reality.
As usual, the cast is filled with lightweight Hollywood’s lightweight performances. This is the case of Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe and Benedict Cumberbatch. There is also Michael Cera, who gives life to Bjorn, Korda’s nerd German assistant.
Among so many stars, British Mia Threapleton was chosen to play Korda’s daughter, a function she developed with praise. Liesl, his character, is a nun on the eve of making his votes until he is co-opted by his father to accompany him in his endeavor.
The two then come out, next to Bjorn, in the back of the venture’s investors. Among the trio’s adventures, we find that the expansive and successful Korda is severe with the children and absent from their lives, communicates shouting with the partners and enriched through dubious mechanisms. And, more than that, your behavior is the result of rooted family systems.
But Korda feels to blame and wants to get closer to her daughter. His existentialist questions are materialized by Anderson in a shrewd manner in times of almost death of the entrepreneur, when he has visions of himself being judged in the beyond. Meanwhile, Liesl assumes the role of rationalizing the absurd situations in which the two meet.
The great megalomaniac construction, in the end, has the same proportions as the emotional issues poorly resolved by Korda.
