Wes Anderson resists his independent republic
The director and his all-star troupe present "The Phoenician Plot" at the Cannes Film Festival.
Special Envoy to the Cannes Film FestivalIt's hard to know how Wes Anderson manages to continue to be such a happy anomaly in today's Hollywood. His films remain, film after film, tremendously true to themselves and oblivious to fads and trends, building a filmography of exceptional coherence in American cinema of recent decades. Anderson's supernatural ability to summon in each film a good handful of international stars who lower their cachet to become part of the director's highly personal universe.The Phoenician Plot, which stars Benicio del Toro, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Riz Ahmed, Michael Cera and, of course, Bill Murray, who has already collaborated with the director for eleven years.
The title refers to the ambitious project to exploit the resources of an undeveloped region that has been promoted for decades by Anatole Korda (Del Toro), one of the richest men in Europe and a specialist in surviving constant attempts on his life. Korda's plan is in its final stages, but it is in danger, so the businessman embarks on a journey through the region with his nun daughter and her tutor to meet with the project's partners and try to save it.in extremisThe business plot, complex and difficult to follow at times, is nothing more than a pretext to stage a story of reunion between a father and his daughter, played by Mia Threapleton, yet anothernepo babyfrom Hollywood –she is the daughter of Kate Winslet– and the most refreshing new thing in thetroupeAnderson's.
After the relative relaxation of Wes Anderson's style coordinates that meantAsteroid City(2023),The Phoenician PlotIt is a return to the narrative aesthetic that is the hallmark of the house: dizzying dialogues, sets of an out-of-scale baroque style and an unnaturalistic staging in which the actors seem almost like figurines ofstop-motionthat the director manipulates at will. Through the protagonist, Anderson evokes the archetype of the charismatic and seductive European business magnate in the style of Onassis, although the most direct source of inspiration is his wife's father, the Lebanese businessman Fouad Malouf, to whom he dedicates the film. "He's the type of character that Anthony Quinn could have played," Anderson states in the press kit, having written the role with Del Toro in mind.
AlthoughThe Phoenician Plotdoes not reach the level of formal paroxysm ofThe French Chronicle(2021), Anderson's latest films become so entrenched in their stylistic signatures that they often drown out the emotions within the stories. And the director's impressive narrative device increasingly seems like an end in itself, rather than a means to unfold the story and characters.
After the acclaimedBacurau, Brazilian Kleber Mendonça Filho returned to the Cannes competition this Sunday with the interestingThe secret agent, a story set in Brazil in 1977 and starring an engineer who hides in a kind of private protection program for those persecuted by the powers that be of an authoritarian and corrupt state. The film plays a bit of hide-and-seek with the viewer, moving between thethriller, the period drama and the exercise of historical memory with unexpected changes of direction and leaving important gaps in the story for the viewer to fill in. Mendonça Filho seems more interested in capturing the state of anxiety and paranoia of the castaways of a failed society than in stretching the plot threads that the story offered, a questionable decision, but one that makesThe secret agentA truly unique film.
A new Petzold at the Directors' Fortnight
It's surprising that the most prominent German filmmaker of recent years, Christian Petzold, wanted to present his new work at one of Cannes' parallel festivals, the Fifteenth Directors' Festival, given that he is one of the star filmmakers of the Berlinale.Mirrors No. 3is a drama about existential angst and the sense of loss that intertwines the destinies of a piano student who survives a fatal car accident and the woman who takes her into her home to help her recover. As usual, Petzold moves the pieces of the story with intelligence and elegance, aided by Paula Beer's luminous performance. The maturity and restraint with which Petzold handles material that could have easily devolved into a feuilleton-esque drama is appreciated, but the humor and inspiration of his previous film,The red sky, very similar in the elements it brought into play (four characters and a rural house) but superior to this new work by the German.
