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Seduced And Abandoned (15)
Directed by James Toback
4 Stars
"The movie business is the worst lover you've ever had in the sense that you are seduced and abandoned over and over again," says Alec Baldwin in this highly amusing and insightful documentary about the gritty realities of film-making today.
The Hollywood star embarks on a hilarious journey with writer-director James Toback, director of Bugsy and Tyson, to raise financing for their next feature film at last year's Cannes film festival.
Set in Iraq, it pays homage to Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango In Paris and is provisionally entitled Last Tango in Tikrit.
Baldwin's slated to play a right-wing government operative who falls for a left-wing reporter. Toback is adamant he wants Neve Campbell to co-star and that's non-negotiable.
Yet as the pair navigate Cannes choppy waters, meeting producers and billionaire financiers, the reality is brutal.
These people are only interested in the marketability and bankability of a film and its cast. Neve Campbell will only get them $5m in funds but Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain, the actors du jour last year, will pull in 10 times that sum. As one producer tells them, "I look at it as purely business."
As Toback deftly explores the conflict between the art of film-making and money interest, illuminating Cannes' split personality as both a glamorous cinema festival and a marketplace for product, he creates his love letter to the art form.
He and Baldwin interview leading actors and the creme de la creme of the directing world such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski, who speak frankly about their work and the film business.
Their reminiscences are priceless gems and are the highlight of Toback's fact-finding mission which clearly suggests the likes of Mean Streets, Raging Bull and Apocalypse Now would never have been made today.
Whether Last Tango in Tikrit is a real pitch or not doesn't truly matter. It results in this thought-provoking documentary, the dream of every film buff.
Maria Duarte
