The Phoenician plot It was the most anticipated film of this Cannes 2025 festival. It couldn’t have been otherwise because for many, many, Wes Anderson is too important, too unique, too special director. Certainly, this is one of his most funny films, even more extreme, with the usual cast full of stars, the usual skill of colors and shapes. But it is also a well -structured film, with an interesting rhythm and above all a clear and defined identity, in his melancholy.

The Phoenician plot – The plot

Hard times for the billionaire, businessman, philanthropist, pilot, mediator and mirror Zsa-Zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro). Someone wants to remove it in the middle, it is continually victim of attacks, attacks. Who knows who is behind, perhaps the competitors, perhaps the brother Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch), perhaps the many bankers, monarchs, captains of industry, businessmen, mafiosi that he continually scams, manipulates, while he vules a sort of role of crazy variable. But who will leave his empire and his wealth? For him there is only one answer: Liesl (my threapleton), whom he thinks to be his daughter. He wants to become a nun, take the votes, but he agrees to follow Korda around the world, in the company of the shy botanist and guardian of the large and unwanted offspring of Korda: Bjonr Lund (Michael Cera). It will be only the beginning of a strange, dangerous and ridiculous adventure, which Wes Anderson, like his usual, makes ridiculous yet interesting dialogues, of a facesca geomatry in which the pastel colors dominate, the deconstruction of spy-adventure mopoi. Even more than in Asteroid City Or its past, here there is truly an obsessive research of cardboard, demitizing fiction.

The Phoenician plot It is illuminated by the beautiful photograph of the veteran Bruno Delbonnel, through which Wes Anderson delights in constantly pushing on a tacky and deliberately excessive dimension of unreal locations, yet deeply connected to the beautiful Epoque, as well as to the irrealty that became industry in the Hollywood of the 1920s and 1930s. But it is useless to hide that there are decisive echoes of what was the genus Adventure and Spy also literary. There is something of a H. Rider Haggard, of a Jules Verne, as well as by Charles Dickens, Emilio Salgari and many others in the 105 minutes of this eternal travel around a world that does not have a clear historical location. Anderson Missed 1920s and 1930s with the 1960s, combines Hard Boiled with espionage, an exotic melodrama with echoes of Eastern Europe cinema that has always loved madness. And so here is also the black and white, Klimov, but then a little Pasolini, here is Almodovar and Woody Allen. What makes it, however The Phoenician plot So interesting, it is also the lightness that permeates everything, the irreverent irony with which it connects to the stereotypes of the past of all kinds, to make it a very original use.

Beyond the laughter, a look at the myth of exceptionalism

Needless to say, then there is also a lot of Martin Scorsese, of his cinema on the great controversial figures, in this The Phoenician plot. Benicio Del Toro is magnificent for how he lends himself to this carousel, to make his Korda a clear parody of that Hughes hotel, of which he recreates mannerisms, eccentric narcissism, the coldness of a man devoted exclusively to his own advantage. It survives a thousand stabs of luck, attacks, but its greatest enemy is solitude, sensation of having wasted everything. At perfect complementary union there is this cold and manigolda nun, which has the bent eyes of the Threapleton, and with which Wes Anderson also outlines his curious relationship with the faith and symbols, to which he dedicates a whole series of pre-moving visions between the disturbing and the desacralizing. The Phoenician plot Then he makes use of the usual 24 -carat outline cast: Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, Riz Ahmed, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Almeric, Bryan Cranston, Bill Murray, Willem Dafoe and then check you because I am forgetting many others. And this time, unlike some of his other works, Wes Anderson uses them perfectly with the millimeter.

There is a perfect rhythm in this film, a perfect mediation between grotesque black comedy and appendix story, maintains a certain innocence while destroying the twentieth century and its myths. There are also tributes to titles such as Casablanca, The great illusion, Asphalt that burns, The dictator of the free state of Bananas And many others, small Easter Eggs placed there in here, in a story that sways on the wings of a now lost cinematic romanticism. Which makes The Phoenician plot Often and willingly also melancholy, for that artisan and sleeve cinema and innocent of the past. Wes Anderson also reason about sin and guilt, the relationship between morality and religion, between individual and community. It does so perfectly consistent with its soul Wedrus, but with a visual abundance and a script (to which Roman Coppola also contributed) which brings us back to the times of the glories, of The aquatic adventures of Steve Zissouwith the theme of paternity, the one that also reigned in The tendibouhers. Mind you, it is not a masterpiece and beyond the workers, nothing will be played, but it is a very pleasant, fresh film, a small resurrection for its cinema.

VOTE: 7