THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME 15

Wes Anderson is a director with a highly individual and quirky visual style and he has been at the top of the independent American film industry for over 20 years, first coming to prominence with films such as The Royal Tenenbaums, The Darjeeling Limited and The Grand Budapest Hotel (which we showed at OC a few years ago).

His latest is The Phoenician Scheme which features his usual stunning array of Hollywood actors including Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, Tom Hanks and many more. Set in the 1950s, it tells the story of a rich industrialist, Korda (played brilliantly by Benicio Del Toro), who wants his estranged daughter (newcomer Mia Threapleton) to inherit his business empire. Pitted against a number of dangerous rivals and saboteurs, the pair embark on a highly improbable set of adventures in Europe and the Middle East. As ever with Wes Anderson, we are skilfully guided through a series of darkly comic and ridiculous scenarios and meet some fantastic characters, all told with his customary wit, visual flair and beautiful design.

Sight and Sound magazine wrote: “Anderson delivers his most elaborate creation yet with this high-wire story of Anatole ‘Zsa Zsa’ Korda, an eccentric tycoon planning an infrastructural spree in the desert. And so launches a mad caper, a kooky jape, a careering divertissement, an escapade of high-wire whimsy. It might be Anderson’s densest confection yet; it’s certainly his most headlong and action-packed, with Korda embodying not so much the great man as the superman theory of cinema on his entrepreneurial mission impossible.”