THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME (2025): Wes Anderson’s Latest Premieres at Cannes with a 7 1/2 Minute Ovation

Wes Anderson’s Latest Movie Earns a Nice Ovation

Wes Anderson‘s early summer release, The Phoenician Scheme, premiered at Cannes with a 7 1/2 minute ovation which left one of its stars, Mia Threapleton, in tears.

Wes Anderson is a genius. His latest film is already earning raves for its performances from Benicio Del Toro and Mia Threapleton. This new movie, The Phoenician Scheme, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and earned a 7 1/2 minute ovation afterwards. This film marks Threapleton’s first time working with the eccentric, but brilliant, filmmaker. Threapleton was said to be tearing up thanks to the superb reception the film was welcomed with at Cannes. We seem to have another Anderson winner on our hands, judging from this audience’s reaction to the new picture.

Anderson cited his main cast members as the reasons for the film’s success as well as Roman Coppola, his writing and producing partner. This film’s ovation lasted longer than two of Anderson’s previous films, Asteroid City and Moonrise Kingdom, but was shorter than the one received for The French Dispatch, according to Deadline. Also co-starring in the new picture are funnyman Michael Cera, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson and many more big-name actors who “may have” taken a small pay cut to work with the great Anderson.

In the film, Oscar winning actor Del Toro (Traffic) plays a man who is a billionaire with many enemies and a few key people after him. Mia Threapleton, the daughter of Kate Winslet, portrays his daughter, a nun who starts to seek out what happened in regards to the murder of her mom in a subplot within the picture. Both lead performances are said to be spot-on with Del Toro receiving some of the best notices of his recent career for this role.

This kind of reception that the new Anderson film received isn’t unheard of at these types of film festivals and, sometimes, these ovations can be a false alarm and the films that receive them end up bombing at the box-office or only scoring moderately successful results with critics. This time out, though, Anderson’s picture is such a unique vision, judging from what I’ve read about it, that it could live up to the hype for Anderson’s core fan base. Let’s face it – if you don’t care for Anderson’s work, this one probably won’t change your stance and that could be the reason the film received some mixed to negative reviews at Cannes. Still, at a 78% approval rating at Rotten Tomatoes so far, this could be an early summer specialty hit at the box-office.

Asteroid City was great back in 2023 and was my 13th favorite picture that year while The French Dispatch easily cracked my top 10 back in 2021. FilmBook will be reviewing The Phoenician Scheme when it makes its way to New York at the end of the month on May 30th.

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