James Toback and Alec Baldwin‘s Seduced & Abandoned, which screened this morning at the Salle Bunuel, is a doc that basically says that it’s harder than hell to raise money to make a mid-range or a somewhat lower-budgeted character-driven film unless your marquee elements (stars, action scenes, FX) are directly marketable to a lowest-common-denominator audience in international communities. Which we know going in. It also says it didn’t used to be like this in the ’60s and ’70s and even part of the ’80s, but everything has changed these days for the worse. Which we also know going in.

Now and then a Cannes press conference delivers some kind of newsy, nervy, stand-out quote. But mostly not. Many of the questions can be boiled down to (a) “I’m here because I liked your film and I want you to share a little about the process because it excites me” or (b) “I’m here knowing I can’t really know any more about your film than what I saw on the screen, but here’s a thought that might be fun to kick around.” That’s a long way of saying that the Inside Llewyn Davis press conference, which just ended a half-hour ago, was a little bit meh…but through no fault of the filmmakers.

(l. to. r.) Inside Llewyn Davis costar Carey mulligan, director-writers Joel and Ethan Coen.

Oscar Isaac, who plays the titular character.

Justin Timberlake, Mulligan.

Before arriving in Cannes I wasn’t planning on catching Daniel Noah‘s Max Rose, a new Jerry Lewis film, but now I am. It screens Thursday morning at the Salle Bazin with a Lewis press conference two or three hours later. As Paul Bond‘s 2.28 THR piece pointed out, pic “teams Lewis with comedian Mort Sahl for the first time, [and] is a drama — with funny moments, of course — that delivers the message, as Lewis puts it, ‘You don’t throw away old people.’” I want nothing less than scalding self-portraiture.

I tweeted last night that when it plays before a crowd, Inside Llewyn Davis is a pellet dropped into water. The depth and the delight is in the vegetable dye that spreads out and sinks in, and though obviously emanating from the pellet, da coolness is in the mixture. The Coen Brothers period film, inspired and exquisitely made as it obviously is, is the trigger but not the all of it. And therefore some (like a big-league critic who sat near me last night) are going to sit down with it and say, “Wait…that’s it?”

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.