GNOME CINEMA
GUESTS arriving at a press screening for
The Phoenician Scheme
(or The New Wes Anderson Film, as everybody will prefer to call it) were greeted with free drinks and a selection of tastefully presented but not particularly nourishing nibbles. Inside the auditorium, each seat offered the gift of a beautifully decorated shoe box – which turned out to be empty. Disappointing, but half the scribes there were grateful to the PRs for providing not one but two lazy metaphors to open their reviews with.
Everybody can recognise a Wes Anderson film – deadpan humour; meticulous production design; symmetrical compositions; buttoned-down emotions expressed against buttoned-down visuals; Bill Murray. Netflix has anointed Anderson as its Roald Dahl adaptor, but Kipling would be more appropriate because everything in his stories has to be Just So.