It’s about a ruthless, charismatic European business tycoon …
The Phoenician Scheme is the story of Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio del Toro), a character inspired by audacious, globetrotting capitalists and business magnates – he is an instantly iconic anti-hero. He has nine sons and one daughter, Liesel, a devoted art collector and lover of nature. He is dogged by accusations of profiteering, tax dodging, price fixing, bribery and, worse, is pursued by a clandestine bureaucratic government mission to monitor (and disrupt) his enterprise. But much to their chagrin, Korda seems unkillable.
… and his nun daughter
Korda’s daughter is 21-year-old Liesl (Mia Threapleton). Having entered the convent as a child, she has had little to do with her father. However, Korda is intent on making her his heir, and promises that if she tags along with him he’ll help her unearth a secret that she desperately wants to know. Is The Phoenician Scheme a globetrotting adventure about a seemingly incompatible father and daughter who end up bonding? Not exactly – Anderson is too wary of cliches. But certainly Korda and Liesl’s gloriously strange chemistry echoes previous Anderson odd couples such as Max and Herman from Rushmore or Gustave and Zero from The Grand Budapest Hotel, while being something totally new.
It’s about a business scheme
It’s not a spoiler to say what the titular scheme is – it’s the driving plot of the film. Anderson’s Phoenicia is a made-up country, a Middle Eastern-coded equivalent to The Grand Budapest Hotel’s similarly fictional Zubrowka (although Phoenicia is named after an ancient region). Korda’s scheme is never actually spelled out in its totality, but in essence it’s an ambitious multi-part attempt to industrialise Phoenicia via a series of gargantuan infrastructure projects and pocket 5% of revenue for the next 150 years. Korda has secured the investment to pay for it, but unfortunately the international bureaucrats manipulate the price of a vital construction component, making everything much more expensive. In essence, the story follows Korda – accompanied by Liesl and Michael Cera’s hapless Norwegian tutor Bjorn – as he tries to extract more money from his investors as he enacts his grandest plan yet to protect his family fortune.
It’s inspired by real-ish events (probably, a bit, kind of)
In terms of real-life inspiration, it’s based on the stories of real-life robber barons, although Anderson has not explicitly stated if there were any specific sources or historical events he drew upon. But in the same way The Grand Budapest Hotel is about the encroachment of fascism – that is to say, it is, but it doesn’t lecture you about it – it’s reasonably clear that The Phoenician Scheme has some roots in the story of the mid-20th-century rise of the Middle Eastern petrostates. Though, again, it isn’t preachy.
To find out more about Wes Anderson’s new film The Phoenician Scheme, visit universalpictures.co.uk
In cinemas from 23 May
