The Phoenician Scheme (2025)
The Phoenician Scheme is unmistakably a Wes Anderson film. Every frame screams his signature style—those perfectly symmetrical shots, the washed-out pastels, the performances that feel like they’re happening behind glass. It’s beautiful to watch, I’ll give it that. But something about it left me cold.
The story takes place in a made-up 1950s Phoenicia, where ageing businessman Anatole “Zsa-Zsa” Korda (Benicio del Toro) decides to build some massive underground project. He drags his estranged daughter Liesl (Mia Threapleton) into it, presumably to fix their relationship and cement his legacy. On paper, this sounds like it should hit hard—family drama, redemption, all that good stuff. Instead, the film keeps you at a distance from anything that might actually matter.
Don’t get me wrong, it looks incredible. The production design creates this weird but compelling mix of ancient Mediterranean vibes and retro-futuristic elements, all bathed in that soft, bleached-out light Anderson loves. Bruno Delbonnel’s camera work is as precise as ever—every movement calculated, every frame composed just so. It’s the kind of visual craft that makes you want to pause and admire individual shots. But that’s also the problem. The world feels like a museum exhibit rather than a place where real people live and hurt.
Del Toro plays Zsa-zsa Korda with his usual skill, giving us a man who knows his best days are behind him but won’t admit it out loud. There’s genuine sadness there, but the film won’t let you get close enough to feel it. Threapleton brings a quiet strength to Liesl, and occasionally you catch glimpses of something real in her performance, though they don’t last long. The supporting cast feel more like carefully placed props than actual characters.
The dialogue has that familiar Anderson rhythm: clipped, formal, occasionally funny in a dry way. People talk like they’re reciting lines rather than having conversations, which works fine for the aesthetic but doesn’t help you connect with anyone. Even when characters are supposedly opening up to each other, it feels rehearsed.
Alexandre Desplat’s score does its job without making much of an impression. It’s pleasant enough, occasionally melancholy in the right places, but it mostly just sits there being appropriately atmospheric. Like everything else in the film, it’s technically accomplished but emotionally neutral.
The pacing frustrated me. Nothing’s broken exactly, but whole sections drift by without much purpose. Some sequences are visually clever but seem to exist mainly to show off rather than advance the story. The film moves with Anderson’s characteristic precision but never builds any real momentum.
There are moments that almost work—a wordless scene in an abandoned train station, a father-daughter conversation against an obviously fake sky—where you can sense the emotional weight Anderson was reaching for. But they’re gone too quickly, never given the space to develop into something you might actually feel.
Compared to Anderson’s best work like The Royal Tenenbaums or Moonrise Kingdom, this feels overly cautious. Those films managed to balance his stylistic obsessions with genuine heart. Even Asteroid City, for all its structural weirdness, felt like it was willing to take some emotional risks. The Phoenician Scheme plays things too safe.
I can appreciate the craftsmanship here. Anderson’s vision is as clear and consistent as ever, and there’s definitely pleasure in watching something put together with this much care. But the film never lets its guard down. It keeps everything—emotions, characters, meaning—at arm’s length, leaving you with something that’s easier to admire than to actually care about.