Would it be impolite to blow off a portion of the ILD roundtables? Because James Franco‘s As I Lay Dying screens at the Salle Debussy at 2 pm, and if I miss that there’s the 2:15 pm Salle du Soixantime screening of Inside Llewyn Davis, which I really want to see again. There’s a 4 pm of Valeria Bruno Tedeschi‘s Un Chateau en Italie but the big film of the day is Paolo Sorrentino‘s La Grande Bellezza, which I gather is some kind of 21st Century La Dolce Vita. It screens at the Salle Debussy at 7pm, and there’s going to be a crowd.

Tomorrow marks my seventh day of humping around in this town, 18 hours a day. Five full days left starting today, and then a wake-up, Roman Polanski‘s Venus in Fur and some filing before flying to Paris late Saturday afternoon, 5.25.

Tomorrow’s big films are Steven Soderbergh‘s Behind The Candelabra, Frank Simon‘s Weekend of a Champion and Claire Denis‘ Les Salauds. Wednesday’s headliners are Nicholas Winding Refn‘s Only God Forgives and J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost. Thursday’s big draws are Alexander Payne‘s Nebraska,Daniel Noah‘s Max Rose and the Jerry Lewis press conference. Friday’s are James Gray‘s The Immigrant and Jim Jarmusch‘s Only Lovers Left Alive. My only Saturday screening will be Roman Palanski‘s Venus in Fur at 8:30 am.

“You didn’t know?” the doctor asks. “Uhm, nope,” says Llewyn. I think she went back to Akron, Ohio, the doctor remarks. “So the baby would be…uhm, maybe two years old now?,” Llewyn asks/observes.

Toward the end of Act Two Llewyn is travelling to Chicago in a car with a mostly silent Garrett Hedlund and a garrulous John Goodman in the back seat. There’s a moment when the car is cruising along at night and Davis notices an exit sign that says “Akron, Ohio.” He stares at it but the car keeps going and that’s that. It’s a moment. The fact that Llewyn doesn’t get off and try to somehow find the woman with the baby is not surprising. But he’s clearly thinking about it for a few seconds. This is a character-revealing moment. Others in his position might firmly decide that they have to find the woman and meet the child, etc. But not Mr. Davis.

I love quiet little moments like this. Moments that either sink in or they don’t, but are in no way emphasized. Make of them what you will.

People in line to Theatre Croisette management: “Kiss our collective ass, s’il vous plait.”

Guy with glasses: “The Theatre Croisette people have fucked me. They’ve stolen an hour from my life and it’s gone forever. All they had to do was take a head count and gives us a heads-up…assholes!”

Mistake. I waited in line for a full hour — from 6:50 to 7:50 pm — and for all of that effort I didn’t get in. Now this happens and I accept that. Part of the rough and tumble of Cannes. But I was angry that the Theatre Croisette management couldn’t be bothered to do a head count of the people in line and tell those who were waiting beyond the fail-safe position that the odds don’t look good. I worked as the manager of the Carnegie Hall Cinema in ’79 — it’s the considerate thing to do.

Even if had gotten in the film started about a half-hour late. I’m on a clock here and have no patience for theatres that don’t respect that.

So that’s it for all Theatre Croisette screenings for the remainder of the festival. In my mind the people who are running it are dicks, and I haven’t got time for this crap. I’m restricting myself henceforth to Grand Lumiere, Salle Debussy (where my pink-with-yellow-pastille badge carries some clout), Salle du Soixantieme and market screenings (Olympia, Star and the other one).

Clouds hovering over my hour-long vigil in line to see Tip-Top. It started to sprinkle a bit towards the end of my wait.

And yet Toback and Baldwin’s encounters with various international money guys and several major directors (Scorsese, Polanski, Coppola, Bertolucci) and movie stars (Ryan Gosling, Jessica Chastain, Neve Campbell) are a lot of fun. There are many tasty and hilarious moments. This is a fun, wise, tangy, knowing, entertaining and even heartwarming film. (Really.). But it’s also bothersome because the spine of it is about Toback-Baldwin trying to raise money for a film that anyone would say right off the bat is not very commercial and in fact sounds too threadbare as a concept.

Toback-Baldwin’s idea is to make a Last Tango in Paris-like drama set in Iraq that would costar Baldwin and Campbell as, respectively, a conservative businessman and a left-wing journalist who meet and have some kind of mad affair in Tikrit. It’s basically “the world is coming to an end…let’s fuck,” as Baldwin explains. Due respect but they might gave been able to raise money on this concept 15 years ago, when Baldwin and Campbell were much hotter commercial commodities than they are today, and also when they were hotter looking.

Baldwin is in his mid 50s and Campbell is 39, and while they’re obviously attractive and well-tended people nobody particularly wants to see them buck naked and rutting, no offense. Or I don’t, at least. I’m saying this with the utmost respect. I wouldn’t have wanted to see Gary Cooper‘s naked ass when he was in his mid 50s either.

Otherwise, Seduced & Abandoned is a savory stew of observations, recollections, laments, wise insights and wiseacre-isms. I enjoyed every component, shot, line, interview and clip. (Including an engaging portion that features Hollywood Reporter critic Todd McCarthy and Variety critic Scott Foundas.) It’s fine. I just wish that Toback-Baldwin had tried to raise money for a project that sounded promisingly commercial, or even half-commercial.

And that won’t be because like-minded sorts aren’t sharp or open enough. A few knowledgable people of some influence are going to say “Well…I don’t think it quite gets there.” There’s going to be a bit of a backlash. Which always happens whenever a strong film appears that doesn’t precisely spell itself out. And such films are always the ones that expand and deepen and touch bottom over time. Or within hours after your first viewing…whatever.

All I know is that I can’t wait to see Inside Llewyn Davis two or three more times. I’m seriously thinking about catching it again tomorrow, only I can’t because Monday’s 2:15 pm Salle du Soixantieme screening conflicts with the Inside Llewyn Davis round tables, which I have to attend.

Inside Llewyn Davis is a sardonically funny American art film about frustration and wintry despair and the Sisyphusian struggle of a folk singer who’s talented and who cares about his art but isn’t good or lucky enough to make it to the next level, and the week-long journey he goes through that takes him from a kind of semi-resigned “fuck me” slumber mentality to an “oh, to hell with it…this shit is infuriating…I hate folk music!” feeling. Bob Dylan, trust me, is going to love this thing — he’s going to effing swear by it.

Anybody who knows enough about period films knows you can’t replicate or reanimate the past — you can only riff on it, as the Coens do, and somehow create a parallel past of your own. Variety‘s Scott Foundas has written that “as they did with the 1940s Hollywood setting of Barton Fink, the Coens have again taken a real time and place and freely made it their own, drawing on actual persons and events for inspiration, but binding themselves only to their own bountiful imaginations. The result is a movie that neatly avoids the problems endemic to most period movies — and biopics in particular — in favor of a playful, evocatively subjective reality.”

I love this portion of Peter Bradshaw’s Guardian review:

“Cannes audiences just heard a clean, hard crack: the sound of the Coen brothers hitting one out of the park. Their new film is brilliantly written, terrifically acted, superbly designed and shot; it’s a sweet, sad, funny picture about the lost world of folk music which effortlessly immerses us in the period.

“The musical interludes are stunningly achieved: a pastiche chart single about President Kennedy and the moon mission brought the crowd I was among close to bopping in the aisles. This has something of Woody Allen movies like Sweet and Lowdown and Broadway Danny Rose; there’s a playful allusion to Breakfast at Tiffany‘s and even a weird casting echo of Walter Salles‘ On the Road — and this movie is incidentally everything that dull film wasn’t. But it is through-and-through a Coen brothers film, as pungent as hot black coffee.”

As Oscar Isaac’s titular character says to Carey Mulligan‘s pregnant, relentlessly pissed-off folk singer at one point, “Have you ever heard the expression ‘it takes two to tango’?” There is a lot of tango-ing going on around Cannes this morning. But don’t expect Inside Llewyn Davis to lift you up like a father lifts a baby and show you all the steps. You’ll have to supply some of your own.

This movie is a treasure — an embarassment of Coen-y riches that doesn’t quite “add up” to anything, certainly not for anyone looking for a character-driven “story” or a conventional ending or any of that jazz. But it does add up to the fact that it’s an embarassment of Coen-y riches. And that’s more than enough for me.

The basic story is about a not-untalented folkie troubadour slacker named Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) who performs well enough but not quite well enough to make it big, or even bigger. Or even work enough to afford his own place. He’s mainly a hanger-on, a deck-shuffler, a stay-in-placer — a generic one-step-forward, two-steps-backward type of guy. Not a complete unknown, but no vision and no spark and no direction home.

The movie is primarily about how Llewyn hangs on and gradually arcs his way from feeling dispirited and semi-despondent to feeling out-and-out despair and on the brink of giving up. But the despair that tugs at him is so delicious it’s like ice cream. And the dry and succinct sensibility that informs the Coen’s direction is so richly realized. And the timing of each scene, the perfect acting, the cutting, the magnificently wintry color scheme…I could go on all night.

I mean, I obviously know what happens and what the faded wintry colors convey and where it all goes but the point, I think, is that Inside Llewyn Davis is not “about” anything except itself. It’s a work of mocking social satire on one level and on another level an extremely sly, austere, sardonic and culturally on-target art pour l’art movie. The Coen’s films have always been less about some kind of precise narrative yield or engaging character turns or what-have-you and more more about (take your pick or choose all) irony, detail, authenticity, perversity, painterly beauty, eccentricity, flair, color, hints, allusions and nothing left to chance.

What a cast! Everyone is perfect. But cheers to Isaac, Carey Mulligan, John Goodman (a hilarious turn), Garrett Hedlund, Justin Timberlake, F. Murray Abraham (also especially brilliant), Stark Sands, Jeanine Seralles, Frank Ridley, Girls‘ Adam Driver and Ethan Phillips.

I have to think about this film some more. By that I mean it’s 10:05 pm and there are two big parties happening and I feel like being social.

“I designed everything in the house, so it was really cool to see it on film,” Hilton says. “That house is like my dream house. I worked so hard on every detail.” Good effing God.

I can’t watch the 3D version of The Last Emperor because it directly conflicts with Inside Llewyn Davis. Crap. I also can’t attend the 11 am marketing panel at the American Pavillion, which Indiewire‘s Dana Harris is hosting.

From 3.9.12: “The Coen’s script, typically sharp and well-honed with tasty characters and tart, tough dialogue, is about lethargy, really. And about taking care of a friend’s cat. And seeing to an abortion and trying to get paid and figure out your next move and whatever else, man. It’s about a guy who isn’t even close to getting his act together, who just shuffles around from one couch to the next, grasping at straws, doing a session recording one day and trying to land a performing gig the next, like a rolling stone, no direction home.

“It’s about how shitty it felt to be aimless and broke without a lot of passion in the first year of the Kennedy administration. It has flavor and realism, but it has no story to speak of, really. Shit just happens. It’s a bit like A Serious Man, but without the theme about God’s cruelty and indifference to the plight of mortals.

“The period details are subtle and spot-on, and yes, Bob Dylan does make an oblique appearance at the very end (and is heard singing “I Was Young When I Left Home“) but Davis…? What a loser, what a deadhead. But I loved the script. It’s a real Coen Bros. film. When you’ve finished it you know you’ve tasted the early ’60s and that atmosphere (if I know the Coens the CG recreations of 1961 Manhattan are going to be exceptional) and that kick-around way of life, and that you’ve really become familiar with Llewyn Davis’s loser lifestyle. It’s something to bite into and remember.”

But here’s a fourth factor: Leonardo DiCaprio‘s Gatsby is a touching figure. He’s such a clueless romantic in a sense — so constipated and totally persuaded by the importance of appearances and so in love with Daisy and yet so delusional about her true nature that your heart goes out to him. He’s so far from getting it that you want to take him aside and give him a pep talk and maybe offer some advice. You feel for him. Which is more than you can say for Robert Downey‘s Tony Stark.

Grace of Monaco star Nicole Kidman, Ain’t Them Bodies Saints costar Rooney Mara, the Fruitvale Station guys (Ryan Coogler, Michael B. Jordan, Octavia Spencer, Melonie Diaz) and Mandela: Walk to Freedom director Justin Chadwick and costar Naomie Harris joined Harvey Weinstein on stage for the presentation.

Based on the trailers shown, the likeliest Weinstein Co. Oscar contenders are John Wells‘ August: Osage County and Ryan Coogler‘s Fruitvale Station. If you ask me Twenty Feet From Stardom, which the Weinstein Co. acquired at Sundance, is a likely Best Documentary Feature Oscar contender but today’s presentation was about future releases. Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, which I saw at Sundance, is going to be a sizable critical hit and a likely Spirit Awards nominee.

“Has there ever been a movie so aggressive toward Hollywood power structures?,” Kohn asks. “From Budd Schulberg‘s 1941 novel ‘What Makes Sammy Run?’ to Robert Altman‘s The Player, storytellers have constantly assaulted the studio system, but Folman makes its evils come alive with phantasmagorical effects that force viewers to see the argument from the inside out.

“The Congress rails against commercialism with an absurdly far-fetched premise rendered in the bright palette of a Ralph Bakshi movie and a wandering surrealism that echoes Naked Lunch. Yet it’s also a wholly original and thoroughly surprising fusion of sensory overload and liberal philosophy bound to confuse and provoke in equal measures.”