An Almost Perfect Affair (1979)

A young unknown American film maker (Keith Carradine) travels to the Cannes film festival in an attempt to sell his first movie. The last thing he expected to find was romance in the form of the wife (Monica Vitti) of a famous Italian producer (Raf Vallone). Directed by Michael Ritchie (DOWNHILL RACER), the film's Cannes festival setting is quite amusing as we get glimpses of "real" wheeling and dealing and it does look glamorous. But the romance is at the forefront and here's where the film fails. Carradine and Vitti have zero chemistry and generate no sparks whatsoever. You can't believe that these two would ever hook up much less fall passionately in love, even as Georges Delerue's underscore goes into overdrive trying to convince us otherwise. So this just about kills the movie dead in its tracks. And Raf Vallone's husband is too forgiving and understanding to the point of incredibility. Still, for film geeks, the Cannes setting is fun. With Dick Anthony Williams, Christian De Sica, Anna Maria Horsford and as themselves: Farrah Fawcett, George Peppard, Brooke Shields, Paul Mazursky, Edy Williams and Rona Barrett.