Wes Anderson’s ‘The Phoenician Scheme’ Scores 7.5-Minute Ovation After Cannes Premiere, Leaving One Star In Tears

It’s not Cannes without Wes Anderson, and the Houston native’s The Phoenician Scheme has its world premiere Sunday night in Cannes, notching a 7½-minute ovation. First-time Anderson-film star Mia Threapleton was tearing up as the crowd’s applause continued.

How does that stacks up to his streak at the Palais?

Anderson’s 2023 desert absurdist comedy rolled up a six-minute-plus cheer at the Palais, while his 2021 The French Dispatch, which repped the first Cannes post-Covid, clocked a reported nine-minute ovation. Moonrise Kingdom reportedly had a five-minute ovation in 2012.

In his review, Deadline’s Pete Hammond said The Phoenician Scheme “belongs lock, stock and barrel to Benicio Del Toro, playing this Onassis-style billionaire who proves again to be so adept to the rhythms of Anderson’s dialogue and delivers flawlessly here.”

Written by Anderson and his longtime collaborator Roman Coppola, The Phoenician Scheme is a return to form to the filmmaker’s offbeat dysfunctional family comedies, i.e. Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums. Set in 1950, it follows European industrialist Anatole “Zsa-zsa” Korda (Del Toro). He’s survived yet another attempt on his life (his sixth plane crash). Korda’s wide-ranging, wildly complex, and ruthless business practices have made him an enemy to not just rival enterprises but also governments of every ideology across the globe — and a target for assassins. Now in the final stages of a decades-long project, and with threats never-ending, he appoints a successor, his estranged daughter Liesel, a nun, (played by Kate Winslet’s daughter Mia Threaplton). With his personal tutor Bjorn (Michael Cera) in tow, Zsa-zsa and Liesl sweep across Modern Greater Independent Phoenicia meeting their assorted partners on a mission to close The Gap (a rapidly expanding financial shortfall) which Zsa-zsa quantifies as: “Everything we got — plus a little bit more.” Meanwhile, Liesl is looking into the unsolved murder of her mother, Zsa-zsa’s first wife.

The movie also stars Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Jeffrey Wright, and Scarlett
Johansson; plus Richard Ayoade as a helpful freedom fighter, Benedict Cumberbatch as Zsa-zsa’s
mysterious half-brother Nubar, Rupert Friend as the shadowy agent “Excalibur” and Hope Davis
as Liesl’s Mother Superior.