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FESTIVAL IN CANNES Send This Review to a Friend
Veterans of the Cannes Film Festival will immediately recognize the authenticity of both the background and the deal-making manipulations depicted by writer-director Henry Jaglom in his frenetically intimate "Festival in Cannes." I've been there and Jaglom gets it right.
Jaglom's style is again true to form. He is fond of setting up a situation and pursuing his characters in its context rather than writing slick scripts with conventional story plots. The method is not for every taste, but its advantage is texture. When you leave "Festival in Cannes" you'll feel as if you've been there ambling along the Croisette, ogling the stars and looking in on the famous hotels where the powerful and the would-be powerful hang out.
Jaglom lucks out with his casting. Greta Scacchi, always a knockout, is both charming and convincing as Alice Palmer, an actress who has a script that she passionately wants to direct. It is wonderful to see the fabled French actress Anouk Aimee ("A Man and Woman," "La Dolce Vita," "8 1/2") in the role of Millie Marquand, a star in need of a vehicle and the object of Palmer's casting quest that she feels will sell her picture, which is meant to be a revealing , truthful portrait of a woman. Ron Silver is also superbly typical as big-time producer Rick Yorkin, desperate for a hit and also trying to cast Marquand. Maximilian Schell couldn't be better as "Victor Kovner," a has-been director and Marquand's long-time but estranged husband, who turns up with an aspiring young starlet.
All of this is Cannes personified as well as a portrait of the movie business with its back-stabbing and shakiness. What really completes and compounds the picture is the interloper Zack Norman as Kaz, who has zilch to work with but is palming himself off as a producer who can make things happen, all the while playing one possibility off against another and lying to everybody. His type is legendary in Cannes, and reminds me of the overheard conversations in which such big-talkers may trumpet deals in the millions and then say, "By the way, I left my wallet in my room--can you pay for lunch?" Kaz is a bit more sophisticated than that, but he is the film's wheeler-dealer nerve-center.
Alex Craig Mann is sharp as Yorkin's assistant Barry, who has ambitions of his own, and Jenny Gabrielle is properly starry-eyed as Blue, whose independent film has acquired the buzz of a newly-discovered hit. To build authenticity, Jaglom has also sprinkled the film with real-life notables, including Faye Dunaway. As with other Jaglom concoctions, there is a tendency to meander more than many viewers will like, but the assemblage here is so colorfully on-target that one comes away with a Cannes portrait that should be amusing for those who have never taken part and a nostalgic trip of recognition for the initiated. A Paramount Classics release.
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