Festival in Cannes

Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas

A giddy comic fantasy, full of romance, chicanery and beguiling, sophisticated players.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

One of the season's most watchable treats.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

Wry and sometime bitter movie about love.

Variety Scott Foundas

Jaglom's quickest and funniest picture in years and the most accessible.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

It isn't a good movie, but it is diverting, a showcase for Anouk Aimee, Greta Scacchi and Ron Silver, and a peephole on behind-the-scenes moves.

Boston Globe Loren King

Many of the story lines offer only superficial insight into the characters; Silver's rich but unhappy mogul has been done far too many times.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Rick Groen

Festival in Cannes is definitely Jaglomesque, but can't get that tricky balance right -- the result is a picture as charmingly insubstantial as the world it invokes.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Makes compromises itself, but only because of its small budget and its director's mixed dark-and-rosy vision, at once cynical and sentimental. Yet at least it has a vision -- of both life and cinema.

New Times (L.A.) Andy Klein

Festival in Cannes is an amused indictment of Jaglom's own profession; he doesn't seem to be making excuses for anybody's compromised (or even downright immoral) behavior here.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

A good deal of anger washes through this acerbic portrait of the movie business in histrionically high gear. But so does a lot of sentimentality, and as the sentimentality quotient rises, it erodes the film's credibility.

Village Voice Ed Park

Has shades of such oleaginous insider-treading as "The Player" and "Celebrity," but the mood, like the lighting, is altogether sunnier.

Film Threat Chris Gore

Takes us into the heart of the desperate, needy, funny, alternately glamorous and sleazy world of the international movie business.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

The best of the lot are Greta Scacchi, as an actress trying to peddle her first screenplay (with herself attached as director), and Ron Silver.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Even the women in Festival in Cannes feel more like sketches than fully realized people -- the aging actress, the naive hopeful, the newly minted starlet -- leaving you nothing but the showbiz satire to chew on.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

In crafting an insider's perspective, Jaglom has done an effective job. It's too bad that nearly everything else fails.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

With its brisk pace, breezy dialogue and gently jaundiced view of the rites of filmmaking, this is one of Jaglom's most accessible and genuinely enjoyable films.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Paula Nechak

Tainted by cliches, painful improbability and murky points.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Can't hold a candle to Robert Altman's 1992 comedy "The Player." Both films present themselves as knowing views of the movie business, but Mr. Altman and his writer, Michael Tolkin, really knew.

LA Weekly Manohla Dargis

This isn't a terrible film by any means, but it's also far from being a realized work. Jaglom has said that he “writes” his films in the editing room, but for Festival in Cannes he must have been using a crayon.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Even when better members of Jaglom's cast make connections, the atmosphere remains one of dull chaos.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Has some flavor, and Ron Silver gives a swell impersonation of a cool and slimy studio executive.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

Remains little more than a briefly fascinating curiosity, a travelogue for those of us who can't actually attend.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

The only reason to watch this movie is for stargazing, nice shots of the sea and to revel in a world where false promises, lies and empty posturing are actively encouraged.

New York Post Jonathan Foreman

There is something offensively lazy about the thinness of the Jaglom's movie-industry characters, the simplistic problems they face, and the clumps of clumsy, apparently improvised dialogue they have to deliver.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

Pleasantly meanders around a group of people who pitch projects and pitch woo on the Riviera.