Customer Reviews

Festival In Cannes

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

There are two things Hollywood likes to satirize. One politics and two itself. Henry Jaglom's "Festival in Cannes" does a moderate job of showing the more pretentious, ego mania, money driven side of Hollywood. There were moments into the film where I smiled happily at it. Then there were moments where the film dragged. It's a very low key film, but, then again it was made by Jaglom. A talented independent filmmaker. He does not concern himself with the mainstream, and that's something I respect. I guess it's because of that, that "Festival in Cannes" will only be enjoyed by certain audiences.
As I sat in theatre, I was the only person there. The film is only playing in one theatre in all of Chicago! But, sometimes, I thought, the really good films go unseen by the American public. And this is almost one of those kinds of films.
The movie revolves around Alice Palmer (Greta Scacchi) a well known actress who has decided to direct her first film of her own script. She is apporached by a fan, Kaz Naiman (Zach Norman, who steals the scenes his in. He has a Woody Allen quality to him in this film.) she finds out after talking to him that he produces movies and before she knows it, he's out collecting money for her film, 3 million dollars to be exact! But, here's the hitch, the only way they can get the 3 million is IF they can get Millie Marquand (The wonderful Anouk Aimee) to star in the film but, none of this will be easy because a big shot Hollywood producer Rick Yorkin (Ron Silver) wants to give her a role in a new Tom Hanks film.
OK, right now you have to admit this all sounds like it has possibilities. It sounds like it could be a good "back stage" satire on the movie industry. And for the most part it is. But as I watched this film I thought of Woody Allen's "Celebrity". Here's a film that dealt with similar ideas I felt, only because it's Woody Allen one could expect the fast paced quick witted one linners. Not so with Henry Jaglom. He's not as witty.
"Festival in Cannes" is a movie most of the American public will get bored with very quickly. Many won't give it a chance but there was something about it that I enjoyed. But you have to be patience with this movie. It does not have a lot of fast action or funny remarks. But it's a smart well-done film. It has characters that for the most part are pretty well developed. Plus there are wonderful location shots of Paris. The camerawork of the film will bother some though. At certain moments it's very shaky.
The rest of the cast in the film includes;Peter Bogdanovich, Jenny Gabrielle, Maximilian Schell & cameos by Faye Dunaway and William Shatner.
Bottom-line: While the pace of the film is a bit off, and it's goes on for about 10-15 minutes too long "Festival in Cannes" has enough moments where it works, even though it's like a Woody Allen film only not as witty.

Just around the time following the Academy Awards last year, while advertisements for Lord of the Rings and A Beautiful Mind, Gosford Park and The Royal Tennenbaums were taking up huge amounts of space with there showy ads, I was inevitably drawn to this one: a beautiful woman in a glamourous dress, clutching a cell phone as she overlooks the French Rivera. Further inticing me was the name Maxamillian Schell in the credits...a great classic actor who won an Academy Award for Best Actor for the film Judgement at Nuremburg, one of my favorite films. I made it a point to catch this film in the theater. Unfortunately, no nearby cinema ever showed it and I had all but forgotten it when I walked into a Suncoast store to pick up a gift for someone. Again, my eyes were drawn to the glamourous woman on the Riviera. Recalling what I remembered, I grabbed the DVD, got another one for the gift, and payed for them.

As soon as I got home, I put on the DVD. Expecting a great, bitting, acerbic film about Hollywood, I was initially dissapointed. Festival in Cannes constantly made me smile and the stars (especially Schell) were luminous in their roles, but I felt that the film lacked the magic I had hoped for. Enjoyable, yes, but nothing great, and absolutely no special features whatsoever (which is still annoying).

About a week later, I put the DVD on again. Knowing the story, and what would happen, I just began to watch this little gem. The performances began to seem so realistic, the most natural I have ever scene. The characters are almost always in conversations among two people, allowing candid acting to shine. The overlapping dialog and multiple conversations in some scens are reminiscent of His Girl Friday. The acerbic lines began to spring out, ones I had missed originally, and the breathtaking cinematography captivated me. Seeing these great stars with real actors at the festival was a magical experience...Faye Dunaway and William Shatner play themselves in red carpet scenes and the great director Peter Bogdonovich portrays a famous director named Milo.

As the aging French screen diva Anouk Aim¡¦ is fabulous, and deservent of the Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, Maximillian Schell would also make a great nominee for Actor. However, its the supporting cast that steal all the scenes. As Blue, the up and coming starlet, Jenny Gabrielle is fabulous, and as the fast talking film finacier Kaz Naiman, Zack Norman is fantastic...he deserves a Supporting Actor Oscar. Greta Scacchi also does a great job, the supporting actress choice of the year!

This film captured the essence of the Cannes Film Festival, the behind the scenes suffering that goes on to put on a show for the world! Anyone who was dissapointed as I was the first time, I urge you to watch it again and become sucked into the essence of Hollywood, the reasons behind decisions, and the people behind the scenes!

Henry Jaglom is a genius - not of a high - but rather - of a lower order -but a genius, nonetheless. He is one of the living masters (if not the master) of the low budget film - not an accolade to be taken lightly - in an age when money, which always has always spoken at least as loudly in the cinematic world as in ours, is reaching hitherto undreamt of decibels. This film - a romantic comedy (I can't quite fathom various reviewers' bemusement over the genre which is to me obvious from the opening frame)is one in a long series of intricate, small is beautiful, masterpieces. While not of the level of some of his best work (see 'Tracks'), the film is well-acted, superbly crafted, deftly realistic. And, when one considers it as an outrageous spoof on the Kevin Kline/Calista Flockhart version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (feted at the Cannes festival)- the billboard advertisement of which forms the centrally repeated backdrop for the action - not unlike the action of the Shakespearean original's merry-go-round romance - played out in this post-modern, rather banal, decadent, and materialistic context - with a low-brow hustler, brilliantly portrayed by Zach Norman, alternately the Pucklike/Bottomlike character of the ensemble - this film is truly hillarious!
But the story does have it's serious side (barely). Anouk Aimee, with one foot seemingly in the grave, shows us once again, what a great actress truly is, and why neither Cannes, nor any other part of the film industry is what it was, in terms of style or substance, back in the days when Montparnasse 19 (in which she co-starred with Cannes' native son, the tragic, enigmatic, Gerard Phillipe) was screening in local theatres. (I can still see her banging on her bedroom door. "Papa! Papa!" - certainly, one of her best scenes) Film Art vs. crass materialism aside, "movie money" proves to be money, nonetheless. But, no matter how fleeting, love will always endure.

One really has to love film to respect Jaglom's attempt at satire. Finally, Jaglom entertains without being preachy. I am very surprised at some of the negative reviews because in many ways this film is funnier, wittier and more inside than "The Player". Greta Sacchi is perfect as the actress turned writer turned hopeful director. Ron Silver couldn't be slimier or more sympathetic in the final reel. The end of the movie reminds me of "The Way We Were" but with more realism.

Anouk Aimee is used properly as the star she is, and every supporting actor contributes the right feel for a bunch of hustlers on the Rivera.

This is not a movie to wait for the punchline or for the action...it is a mood piece on the big machine that Hollywood became in the 1980's and in many ways is still today. The 80's were the machine at its worst, but slowly things are beginning to change. Even the blockbusters of today tend to have a little more substance than they used to.....with apologies to Tom Hanks.

"Festival at Cannes" is worth watching once, not for its plot but for its fine collection of actors. Everyone seems to be having fun portraying a variety of movie industry hacks, producers, and tired-out stars. These several people wander about in the beautiful south of France town, having various intrigues and minor romances. The film has a feminist edge, as many of the women in the film come out strong in comparison with some of the lost, power-mad men. It should be noted that I never actually cared much for any of the characters; the film's major flaw is that it assumes that just because we have a bunch of interesting characters wandering around, we will end up liking one or more of them. The romance between a high powered producer and an aspiring indie director woman seems particularly unlikely, though the relationship between an older director and ex-star actress is touching and interesting. The film doesn't have much of an ending, it just kind of peters out; however, for the setting and talky dialogue, it's worth a look.

I'm a Henry Jaglom fan and you probably have to appreciate a quality of his films, or at least be aware of it, to understand this movie. For the most part, the dialogue is improvised. With that said, I'm not surprised that a lot of the reviewers here didn't realize this. You might not get the witty lines of a Woody Allen film (as one reviewer criticized), but it's still interesting--and this is key. Jaglom is primarily concerned with interesting dialogue and situations, not one-liners. The fact that the movie stars Hollywood insiders grants the film with a legitimate knowledge over the subject matter. I found this film both funny at times (a scene between Silver and Norman is classic), and touching at times (primarily the scenes between Silver and Scacchi). I don't like all of Jaglom films because not all of them work, but I found this one quite satisfying. Even if the resolution of the plot isn't completely given, it is, at least, implied.

A stunning cast and a brilliant setting -- marred only by incoherent plotting, sloppy editing, and cinematography so kludgy the DP should be taken out and [...].

On second thought, take Jaglom out first. Ok ok, that's a bit drastic. But you can't help thinking that he just took this great cast, told them to improvise along some vague lines, and then tried to mush it all together in the editing room.

The result, not surprisingly, is -- mush. There's half a dozen plot lines here that should all pull together and catch fire, but instead they just spin off idly to nowhere. Or if they're lucky, into cliche-ville.

And technically, yeesh -- the sound is appalling, the lighting amateurish, the camerawork clumsy and fumbling. They'll be trotting this one out in film schools as an example of how not to make a film. (One bright note -- William Shatner's cameo is a hoot!)

Bored blowhards bragging and bluffing; film industry movers or pretenders attempting to do business and attempting to have relationships and then. . .it's over. The film is clever at the start, unsatisfactorily developed in the middle, and, at the end, abandoned. Leave it be.

All the world shows up to be seen at the annual Cannes Film Festival.Producers,stars,agents,actors,scriptwriters flock to the French Riviera where "all of the world is a stage" and deals,romances,flattery and bull fly like angels on their wing!

FESTIVAL IN CANNES is another Henry Jaglom written and directed gem, true to his unique style of intertwining scenes with seemingly improvised-like dialogue.Jaglom takes a smart and satirical look at the film industry and how it makes "strange bedfellows" in order to get pictures done.The backdrop is the Cannes Festival itself with all of it's magic and hype.Jaglom wittily uses the poster sign for A MIDSUMMER NIGHT's DREAM as a tongue-in-cheek reminder that in Cannes people do the craziest of things under the influence of the allure for money,stardom and fame that is created in the mystical fairyland dust of the Film Festival.The players are an actress turned screenplay writer (Greta Scacchi),a high-echelon producer (Ron Silver) a silver-tongued wheeler-dealer entrepreneur (Zack Norman),a naive young starlet (Jenny Gabrielle) and two aging cinema icons,a gorgeous but now playing "mother parts" French actress (Anouk Aimee),and her never-faithful,sometimes ex- husband (Maximilian Schell).They all show their silly and fake faces, and quite frankly make jackasses of themselves as if they were now performing in Shakespeare's farce.That is Jaglom's point:the film industry is always on stage playing a role.

This film is unmistakably Jaglom and for those who know and understand his work will again be delighted at the natural way in which he can tell a story and make actors appear as if they are not acting!

Seeing this film anew made me realize that all of the film posters that were backdrops at the 1999 Cannes Festival(when this film was shot),A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM,ENTRAPMENT,THE WINSLOW BOY to name a few, were all real tanks at the box office.Ah, how fleeting is fame!

If you look for "Festival in Cannes" at your local video store, chances are that you will find, as I did, that it is catalogued under Comedy, when, in fact, it is not. Nor is it a drama. "Festival in Cannes" cannot really be put into one genre or another, because it really doesn't fit into any one place. Though it shows a very interesting protrayal of Hollywood and the process of getting a movie put together, it can at times drag a little. I began the film wondering when it would end, and ended it hoping for a little more.

The plot is rather jumpy, and doesn't really let us get too close to any of the characters. It mainly focuses on Alice Palmer (Greta Scacchi), an actress who has decided to write and direct a film for the first time. At the Cannes film festival, she meets a sleazy, virtually unknown producer(Zack Norman) who wants to make her dream a reality. The catch: Alice wants the French actress Millie Marquand(Anouk Aimee) to star. However, the producer of another film (Ron Silver), would also like Millie in his film in a cameo appearance. There is also a sidestory in which a young woman(Jenny Gabrielle) is making her first appearance in a film that has become an unexpected hit at Cannes, and is quickly turning her into something she has no wish to become: A star.

Gabrielle's character Blue seemed to have an interesting background, and I felt that her character should have been either more developed, or removed from the film entirely, as it really only seemed to be a confusing diversion from the actual plot of the film. The end doesn't really give you a resolution to any of the conflicts at hand, and left me disappointed. I felt as though I'd been brought to the top of a hill, and then discovered that it just drops off at the end.

But "Festival" does provide an interesting little visit into the world of Hollywood and filmmaking. All the characters, though some were rather ill-developed, seemed like they really could be real people, and I wondered whether writer-director Henry Jaglom had actually based some of the characters on people in the business.

If you're a real movie buff, I'd say give "Festival" a look. But it's really not a movie for everyone, and I'd say it's probably not worth owning, or even watching more than just once.