Festival In Cannes (2001)

At the 1999 Cannes film festival, a group of film makers and aspiring film makers wheel and deal, scheme and backstab and play games in love, art and the movie business: an actress (Greta Scacchi) wants to direct a script she's written, an aging French actress (Anouk Aimee) is torn between two film projects, an "artistic" director (Maximilian Schell) attempts to bag a big budget Hollywood film, a producer (Ron Silver) is in danger of losing Tom Hanks as the star of his movie if he doesn't get the right actress, a newcomer (Jenny Gabrielle) has a hit film at the festival but she doesn't know if she wants to become a movie star and a hustler (Zack Norman) plays everybody against each other. Written and directed by Henry Jaglom, this is an often amusing behind the scenes satire of the international film business. But it's still not very good. The film has an improvisational quality to it and I'm sure Jaglom thought it would give the film a naturalism rather than a scripted feel. Unfortunately, what it does is make the whole thing seem amateurish. It doesn't help that outside of Aimee, Schell, Scacchi and Silver the rest of the cast are pretty awful from the supremely untalented Jenny Gabrielle to godawful Zack Norman. The glamorous Cannes setting (actually filmed during the 1999 festival) helps a lot in enjoying the film. With Faye Dunaway, William Shatner and Peter Bogdanovich.