The Phoenician Scheme
Directed by Wes Anderson
- comedy
- adventure
- crime
The story
Wealthy businessman Zsa-zsa Korda appoints his only daughter, a nun, as sole heir to his estate. As Korda embarks on a new enterprise, they soon become the target of scheming tycoons, foreign terrorists, and determined assassins.
What it’s like
Crisp symmetrical compositions, pastel-saturated sets and meticulously staged tableaux in the house style of a Wes Anderson picture: dollhouse interiors, mustard and powder-blue palettes, rapid whip pans and dioramic cutaways, with the shot-to-shot precision giving everything the feel of a storybook spread across a stage. The sound is a bright, ticking orchestral score threaded with mid-century pop and clipped, deadpan dialogue delivered at a quick, brittle clip, so the rhythm is brisk and farcical rather than languid. Its vibe is wry, playful and faintly melancholic, a caper that treats its espionage and arms-dealing as a costume party while a quiet thread about estrangement and reconciliation runs underneath. The violence is stylised and cartoonish, with sudden bursts of gunfire and a few slapstick scuffles but no gore, and the tone stays closer to dark comedy than to thriller dread. It suits a lively weekend night with friends or a playful cinema outing, and fits viewers who love absurdist comedy, precise visual design and an offbeat father-daughter story.
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