The experience of interviewing Wes Anderson is not unlike the experience of watching a Wes Anderson film. It’s brisk. There are entertaining asides. The material is thoughtful and laced with detail that you will often only recognize in retrospect — sometimes after exiting the theater or, in this case, hanging up the phone.

The occasion of this particular conversation is the Cannes Film Festival. To date, Anderson has premiered three films at the Palais — Moonrise Kingdom (2012), The French Dispatch (2021) and Asteroid City (2023) — and will be back this year with his latest feature, The Phoenician Scheme. Like the other directors The Hollywood Reporter has called a Legend of the Croisette — from Ken Loach to Nanni Moretti — Anderson, a lover of film in addition to a maker, feels inextricably linked to the festival where cinema is at its most venerated.

The Phoenician Scheme, out May 30 via Focus Features, stars Benicio del Toro as European tycoon Zsa-Zsa Korda,...