In Wes Anderson’s universe, even decay has good taste. The American filmmaker, a master of cinematic escapism, returns to compete for the Palme d’Or at the 2025 Festival de Cannes with The Phoenician Scheme, a film as frenetic and verbose as it is visually immaculate. It’s a device of melancholic joy, a reminder that cinema can be both shelter and satire, all at once.
Anderson’s recurring themes are all here: dysfunctional families, fatherly abandonment, adultery, sibling rivalry. The Phoenician Scheme features them all. As usual, the plot is melancholic, even painful at times, yet handled with a comedic tone.
Following Asteroid City (2023) and its flight into abstraction, Anderson dives into a story of industrial espionage that becomes a distorted, yet oddly accurate, mirror of our current chaos. Benicio del Toro plays Zsa-Zsa Korda, one of the richest men in Europe; Mia Threapleton is Liesl, his daughter and a nun; Michael Cera appears as Bjorn, their tutor. Together they form a trio of eccentrics in a world that seems to be crumbling. Zsa-Zsa could easily be the alter ego of one of those tech bros dreaming of Mars colonisation.
But there’s something new here: urgency. Beneath the laughter, The Phoenician Scheme speaks of fragile alliances, Cold War absurdities, and our survival instinct to invent fictions. The film features cameo appearances by stars such as Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansson, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Rupert Friend, Willem Dafoe, and Bryan Cranston.
As always, Anderson shoots the world as if it were a scale model of itself. His visual language is nearly choreographic: perfect symmetry, top-down shots, ultra-coordinated colour palettes, patterns across walls and floors. The dialogue is razor-sharp, and the film is drenched in pastel blues, greens, and ochres — with notably less pink this time.
Cinematography and production design are by Bruno Delbonnel, while Alexandre Desplat’s score, a mix of frayed jazz and runaway military marches, creates a world where the ridiculous and the sublime coexist effortlessly. This is a U.S.–Germany co-production, shot at Studio Babelsberg and produced by Anderson himself alongside Indian Paintbrush. It may be the director’s most political film since The Grand Budapest Hotel, but he never loses his signature touch: that tender affection for losers who still dream of being heroes.
Because Anderson’s cinema, in the end, always builds a bridge between dreams and failure — one painted in pastel tones. In theaters from May 29.