Themes: Filmmaking, Creative Block, Social Climbing
Main Cast: Jenny Gabrielle, Greta Scacchi, Kim Kolarich, Rachel Bailit, Zack Norman
Release Year: 2001
Country: US
Run Time: 99 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG13
Plot
The romance, intrigue, and industry politics of the world's biggest film festival -- which is also the world's biggest film marketplace -- provides the backdrop for this typically understated comedy-drama from director Henry Jaglom. Alice Palmer (Greta Scacchi) is a well-known American actress who has written a screenplay that she'd like to direct, and she arrives a the Cannes Film Festival to look for investors. Alice has her eyes on veteran star Millie Marquand (Anouk Aimee) to play the lead, but while Millie loves the script, she's been offered a better-paying supporting role in an upcoming Tom Hanks project. Meanwhile, Millie's former husband Viktor Kovner (Maximilian Schell) is a director fallen on hard times who is trying to scare up financing for his own film. Producer Rick Yorkin (Ron Silver) wouldn't mind leaving Millie in the lurch if it meant landing Alice for his next project. Kaz (Zack Norman) is a less-than-scrupulous producer hoping to put some sort of package deal together. And Blue (Jenny Gabrielle) is a young woman whose shoestring budget independent film has become an unexpected smash hit. Shot in the midst of the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, Festival In Cannes features cameos from such stars as Jeff Goldblum, Holly Hunter, Faye Dunnaway, and William Shatner. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
Henry Jaglom's Festival in Cannes is a thematic cousin of Robert Altman's The Player, but with neither that film's satirical sharpness nor its stature among films about film. In the same way that The Player and Spike Jonze's Adaptation eventually (and intentionally) become prime examples of the forms they're satirizing, Festival in Cannes is a lot like a fledgling festival movie -- small and low budget, but with just enough star power and astute observations to be worthwhile. Chief among those mid-level stars are Ron Silver, ideally cast as a slick producer with infinite resources, and Greta Scacchi, who also appeared in The Player, as the actress-turned-screenwriter he tries to manipulate. Jaglom, an old-school filmmaker born of the maverick 1970s, wants to indict those who come down on the wrong side of the struggle between artistic integrity and the creature comforts of wealth and stardom. However, locating his movie on the banks of the French Riviera, he's inadvertently trivializing his viewpoint by giving the whole experience a sexy, travelogue feel. Festival in Cannes is best when it acts like a documentary, giving its viewers a flavor for Cannes (it was shot during the 1999 festival) while casually capturing the glad-handing and deal-brokering that goes on there, minutely accurate in a way that reflects years of personal experience. Jaglom gets his good ideas a little jumbled, however, when he starts creating strained (and unlikely) romantic relationships between his smartly realized spectrum of festival archetypes. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
