Wes Anderson presented this Monday at Cannes “The Phoenician Scheme” (“The Phoenician plot”) and took the opportunity to make fun of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, and his tariff threat against foreign cinema: “Can you retain films in customs?”, The filmmaker asked.
“The theme of tariffs is interesting, I had never heard of one hundred percent tariffs. I am not an expert in that area of the economy, but I think it means that she says she will stay with all the money and then, what do we get? So I see it complicated. Can you retain movies in customs?” Anderson reflected.
In any case, there are still no details of Trump’s proposal, recalled the director, who was in a very good mood in the press conference in which he presented his film in the Cannes competition, surrounded by the protagonists – Benicio del Toro and Mia Threapleton – and other members of the cast such as Benedict Cumberbatch, Riz Ahmed, Michael Cera or Rupert Friend.
The director told Del Toro’s idea long before there was a script, so the actor was part of the entire process of creating the character, an entrepreneur who during a trip to solve his labor problems will gradually recover his daughter, Liesl (Threapleton), a strict and serious nun, who smokes in pipe.
In preparation for the role, Benicio del Toro said that he did the usual work: “You read the story, you read the script, I spoke a lot with Wes and most of the information that I had to provide my own ideas for the character, I was already in the text.”
In the opinion of the Puerto Rican actor there were many options “where the story could go because the character was full of contradictions, it was challenging and exciting” but the magic later arises in the mounting room, where Anderson ends the film.
The filmmaker acknowledged that “in each movie, you have your ideas of what the movie is going to be but it is she who takes you to another place, where she wants to go.” First is the script, then the actors arrive – “the electric force”, called them- and their work in the end is to “shape” everything.
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This was the work of Wes Anderson with the leading actors of his new production
A special world, Anderson’s, in which the actors have to enter and that is precisely the main challenge when working with him. “You have to take yourself to the world of Wes, you have to find a way to do it, it is exciting and challenging because everyone advances in the same direction,” said Del Toro.
And being part of that world means assimilating concepts and ideas that only for Anderson makes sense at the beginning. Like when he told Del Toro that he had to speak laughing and smoking very fast but would be shot in slow motion. “” Isn’t that like recording and reproducing it at normal speed? ‘I asked.’ It can be, I don’t know, “he replied. But no, it’s not the same.”
For Del Toro, which is the second time he works with Anderson, the essential thing is that he can “channel the child inside to explode, and that is unique as an actor.”
Mia Threapleton -Hija de Kate Winslet- and that enters the Anderson universe for the first time, said that participating in the film has been a dream of fulfilled.
“I was eight or nine years old when I completely fell in love with the history of ‘Moonrise Kingdom’,” explained the actress, who said that she recently found something she wrote in her diary in 2013, a kind of list of desires and among them was “to work with Wes.”
The press conference continued between team jokes that participated in it and those who were sitting in the front row watching, like a Bill Murray in shorts.
The humor was not even lost when Del Toro asked how he would like to die. “Do you ask me because I go black?” He snapped the actor, who only succeeded to say that he didn’t want it to be an accident.
And about his next film, Anderson only advanced that he will be “quite dark” and that he is already working on the script with Coppola and Richard Ayoade.
With EFE information
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