Little White Lies Issue 108

Directed by WES ANDERSON Starring BENICIO DEL TORO, MIA THREAPLETON, MICHAEL CERA Released 23 MAY Allow me to propose a theory: The Phoenician Scheme is the third part of what we shall loosely and unofficially refer to as Wes Anderson’s ‘Life of a Filmmaker Trilogy’. 2021’s The French Dispatch was his unabashed ode to the maverick American journos and culture writers of the ’50s and ’60s, yet when taken in the longview it is also a film that is fascinated with the writing process itself, particularly how the human mind sculpts reality with the use of literary and documentary tools. The film is about finding entertainment in the apparently mundane, and Anderson himself could stand in for any of the scribes on show. Then in 2023 we got the meta-cinematic jewel, Asteroid City,…

Seeing Wes Anderson’s The Phoenician Scheme got us thinking – the man loves nothing more than to redeem a rotter. Benicio del Toro’s Zsa-Zsa Korda is, in many respects, a typical Andersonian antihero in that he has done many awful, regrettable and downright amoral things in his time, and is taking one final roll of the dice to try and clear his conscience and set things right. You think back and the names start pouring in: Dignan; Max Fischer; Royal Tenenbaum; Steve Zissou; Francis Whitman; Mr Fox; Henry Sugar; Augie Steenbeck… All characters with the capacity to cause physical and psychological harm, but who also want to self-sooth and heal. And it’s always men who require that bout of intense soul searching, seldom women. So, in the spirt of the…

The Phoenician Scheme marks Wes Anderson’s twelfth feature film, starring Benicio del Toro as Zsa-zsa Korda, a rich, ruthless businessman who sets out on a complex journey to secure his legacy with his estranged daughter and a bewildered scholar in tow. As well as featuring an entire cosmos of stars, the story hits on themes of family, legacy, beauty and death. With a career retrospective taking place in Paris and London this year, artistic legacy has been weighing on Anderson’s mind. LWLies: Am I correct in thinking that The Phoenician Scheme is a story you first conceived of a while ago? Anderson: I think I first mentioned it to Benicio when we were screening The French Dispatch in at the Cannes Film Festival. So that’s maybe like three or four…

It was hard to know what to expect from a conversation with the actor Benicio del Toro. He isn’t someone who tends to play the celebrity game, instead immersing himself in his screen roles and then slinking back into the ether. His break-out role was as potty-mouthed, limber-bodied hood Fenster in Bryan Singer’s The Usual Suspects (1995) and ever since he has tended to specialise in play hard, serious men who are usually adjacent to the world of crime. An Oscar was the deserved reward for his work in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic (2008), yet confirmation of his place in the upper echelons of the acting firmament came with his lear role in the director’s two-part epic, Ché. Romantic films are notable by the absence on his CV, but comedies are…

Wes Anderson has his little travelling troupe of regular players, his pals he brings along to shoot movies with and have a gay old time. His new one, The Phoenician Scheme, brings back some familiar faces in the form of Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, and Benicio del Toro, but there’s plenty of new blood this time around. Mia Threapleton is a key constituent of the new class, thrust front and centre as cantankerous nun Sister Liesl, estranged daughter to raffish arms magnate Zsa-zsa Korda, who is keen to uncover the secret of how her mother died. Threapleton slinks smoothly into this world of arch irony and spy satire, sporting an ice-white cowl, some twinkling rosary beads and a miniature clay pipe. LWLies: I would love to know, what was your…

When the casting of Michael Cera as Norwegian insect expert and tutor Bjorn Lund in The Phoenician Scheme was announced, many Wes Anderson fans were delighted, expressing surprise that the pair hadn’t collaborated sooner. “Wes Anderson casting Michael Cera must have felt like the cavemen discovering fire,” said X user @ScaredChris. The Canadian national treasure’s penchant for awkward characters and his innate comedic timing makes him a natural fit for the elaborate, offbeat world of Wes. As it turns out, the two first met many moons ago, and have been waiting for an opportunity to work together ever since. LWLies: When did you first meet Wes Anderson? Cera: It was at a tea ceremony. That’s very Wes Anderson. Yes, so he was attending a tea ceremony and Harvey Keitel was…