The Phoenician Scheme

More charitably, The Phoenician Scheme is a palate cleanser – a lovely lark, a spirits lifter.

At its fleeting best — in its meditation on the transactional and the transcendent — this one feels like it’s reaching for something more than surface charm.

A beautiful mixed bag, let’s say, all told.

I was thoroughly entertained and left a bit cold.

The resulting product is just that: a product, with all of the matte pastel appeal of Anderson’s oeuvre, yet little of its memorable charm.

The result is more digestible, though also less moving, than Anderson’s recent Asteroid City, but it does have a stealth emotional weapon in Threapleton’s Liesl, who exudes the intelligence and self-possession of a young Anna Karina.

Despite the elegant aesthetic, I suspect the narrative treads on average ground and becomes somewhat superficial with its group of eccentric characters led by Benicio del Toro. [Full review in Spanish]

...[The Phoenician Scheme is] a story that once again explores the complicated ties between parents and children, although in such an exaggerated formula that it surpasses the absurd and dangerously approaches the ridiculous. [Full review in Spanish]

Del Toro carries himself similarly to how Orson Welles once did: larger-than-life, cutthroat, and cultured. He’s a citizen who belongs nowhere and everywhere. 


Everything looks great, but it fails to generate much emotional impact, and it also feels a bit tedious, as if Anderson were running out of visual and stylistic resources. [Full review in Spanish].