“The Phoenician Scheme”: Wes Anderson or the limits of a well-oiled mechanism

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The Wes Anderson house, specialized for thirty years in the fabrication of picaresque tales and vintage biotopes of family neuroses and the turmoil of the world, invites you into its new play space. It is dedicated to the reunion of arms dealer and international businessman Alexander Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro, in a tailor-made role) with his daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton, daughter of Kate Winslet in the city), a nun who was preparing to take monastic vows before her father, on a tightrope, embarked her on a journey to Phoenicia (sic) to make her the heir to his empire. During the first quarter of an hour of the visit, we will be pleased to see our craftsman bursting the seams of his millimetric style and embracing the madness of Korda, flamboyant crook, unworthy father (he abandoned his ten children) and incarnation of capitalist evil – “Would you like a grenade?” he politely offers each of his guests. An introduction that rhymes James Bond-style adventures, a clear line in the style of Hergé and the Visconti-esque scent of a 1930s nabob in decline, giving hope for a return to the romantic and wild verve of “The Grand Budapest Hotel”.

Alas, the sequel sees Anderson relying on his expertise and a programmatic narrative that runs out of steam and, for the first time, fails to produce any emotional epiphany. This lack of feeling characteristic of the cynical figure of Korda, as relevant as it is as a reflection of the era divided between business and mysticism, illustrates above all the limits of an inspiration that goes around in circles, despite a profusion of picturesque characters (the priceless Bjorn Lund, Liesl's tutor with multiple personalities, deliciously embodied by Michael Cera), stars on the loose (the faithful Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Mathieu Amalric, god Bill Murray) and a thousand and one discoveries – Korda's multiple resurrections and his passages in purgatory, black and white parentheses pastiching Dreyer and Paradjanov. "He's not human, he's biblical," says one of the characters of Korda. The filmmaker should beware of becoming one himself, or of transforming his trademark into an industrial motif.