Seduced and Abandoned, Cannes Film Festival - film review

Alec Baldwin and James Toback's film about not making a film hits the mark for audiences in Cannes
21 May 2013

Last year Alec Baldwin, looking to re-start his film career once 30 Rock had finished, came to Cannes with the portly director James Toback and they filmed themselves at the festival pitching for financial backing for a sexy film set in Iraq, one that might have been called Last Tango in Tikrit, supposedly starring Baldwin and Neve Campbell, perhaps purely as a gambit to assess how difficult it is to get backing for movies these days.

A pretty clear consensus soon emerged among the money-men that this would be a $4-5 million movie at best – unless the pair could get the likes of Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain onboard. They had been hoping for nearer $150 million. Tough times – or a fair calculation?

Intercut with this pitiful footage are interviews, about their careers and the changes in the industry they’ve seen, with directors such as Scorsese, Coppola, Bertolucci and Polanski (who, contrary to the others who think that everything’s going downhill, says that making films is getting easier and easier these days), and with some actors too, including James Caan, Berenice Bejo and Diane Kruger.

Ryan Gosling is startlingly good, looking great and speaking cogently and unguardedly about what it is like auditioning again and again before you are established, and making repeated takes of a scene all day while trying to stay fresh. Here at last is an interview with an actor about acting that has point.

Seduced and Abandoned – it takes its title from Baldwin’s proclamation that “the movie business is the worst lover you can have, you go back again and again, you are seduced and abandoned again and again” – obviously hits the mark for audiences in Cannes. How much it can appeal to a wider audience is another question. It’s in some ways an excuse for a film, a film about not making a film, despite its fancy spilt-screens and carefully deployed archive footage. But there are plenty of funny moments, including an interview with a dotty lady who hosts a charity party on a yacht at Cannes and says she’s always wanted to go into space, to cure cancer and bring peace to the world.

At the start, it’s emphasized that in this business, aiming at immortality, you have to be prepared to give your all – “if you’re not ready to die, you’re not ready to live”. At the end, Toback ambush questions his interviewees about whether they are ready to die. “No”, says Jessica Chastain instantly, “because I want to be a mom.” “I was always ready”, says Polanski. When the movie ends, it’s over, says Toback. He claps his hands and it’s gone.

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