Benicio Del Toro’s Zsa-zsa Korda is one of the wealthiest arms dealers in postwar Europe, with a reputation for skulduggery and dark arts. After the latest in a series of dramatic attempts on his life, he calls on his estranged daughter, the novice nun Sr Liesl (Mia Threapleton), to take over the family fortune.
It’s a problematic inheritance, not least because it cuts out Liesl’s nine younger brothers. And then there are rumours. “They say”, as the reluctant heiress has it, that Zsa-zsa killed her mother and his other wives.
Time, nonetheless, is of the essence. The mogul has hatched the wildly ambitious plan of the title. This enterprise requires both slavery and the co-operation and financial clout of various parties, notably Benedict Cumberbatch’s nefarious Uncle Nubar and Scarlett Johansson’s pragmatic Cousin Hilda.
Unhappily, a wood-panelled room of US tycoons, emboldened by Rupert Friend, have contrived to rig the market against the iconoclastic Korba. They send the price of nuts and bolts rocketing.
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Phoenicia was an ancient Levant empire until the Romans arrived. Anderson’s Phoenicia may be pinpointed on the same fictional globe as Grand Budapest Hotel’s Zubrowka. Travelling across this fantasy region, Zsa-zsa teams up with the dashing Prince Farouk (Riz Ahmed) for an all-or-nothing game of basketball against two snobbish American tycoons (Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston) and attempts to win over the Anderson returnees Mathieu Amalric and Jeffrey Wright.
Stylistically, the separately shot, superimposed actors, mandatory deadpan delivery, and hermetically sealed sets make little advance on the director’s recent airless productions.
Alexandre Desplat’s effective score sounds awfully like the one before.
Fans will find much to like, of course. Thanks to such dependable regulars as the production designer Adam Stockhausen, The Phoenician Scheme – in competition at Cannes – is a beautiful thing, best looked at and admired like a vase in a museum: pretty, pristine and hollow.
Don’t expect the aching melancholy of Grand Budapest Hotel or the raging, imperfect humanity of Anderson’s earliest films. But, unlike the sprawling Asteroid City and scattershot French Dispatch, the machinations find a charming focus in the thawing between Del Toro and Threapleton. Both actors bring a jouissance to the slightly jaded milieu.
Bjorn, Michael Cera’s untrustworthy tutor turned personal secretary, similarly makes for a welcome third wheel in the espionage-adjacent drollery.
In cinemas from Friday, March 23rd
