Seduced and Abandoned

Baldwin and Toback make a snappy comic duo, and half of their talks with a line-up of luminaries focus on the art of filmmaking rather than the business.

A fun, larky travel essay and commentary on the film biz, an exquisite wallow in the most rarefied sort of first-world problems.

Ironically, the failure of the financing mission gives [it] a sharper edge. But in the end, that edge will probably be of more interest to Baldwin, Toback and the film biz than to a civilian, who mostly wants to know why she can't find a decent rom-com.

Toback's directorial intuition proves to be spot-on: their self-revealing brave face on humiliation and despair is deeply cinematic.

This one seems to effortlessly breathe on its own as a buddy/buddy "road picture" with scenic pathways, a few dead ends and refreshing breezes throughout.

The fact that it is so funny eventually becomes strangely sad, which makes the film thoroughly enjoyable but also irresistibly provocative.

The film is at its very best when Baldwin informally cross-examines respected names such as Martin Scorsese, Roman Polanski, Bernardo Bertolucci, James Caan and Jessica Chastain.

Seduced and Abandoned is, if nothing else, a film buff's delight.

Their [Toback and Baldwin] film about the idea of the film is entertaining and diverting, even if there is also something slightly melancholy about this artificial pursuit of a cinematic phantasm.

It's funny stuff, yet the real nuggets here are when [Alec] Baldwin defaults to standard doco-mode and asks an impressive range of people...about the harsh realities of working in the world's most expensive entertainment artform.

An amusing and, at times, genuinely revealing doco - albeit one with distinctively niche appeal, and cloaked in an air of unmistakable self-satisfaction.

As a film trade journalist in the 80s and 90s I covered the Cannes film festival 20 times, and seduced and abandoned is how I always felt...It's like three different docos slapped together, none of them complete and coherent - or satisfying