Mumbai, June 10 :    Mumbai, June 10:  Now that the tinsel has settled down on Devdas' conquest of Cannes, it's time for the real story. India's most expensive film ever made did not please many at Cannes. Derek Malcolm, one of the best film critics from The Guardian, on how Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Rs 50 crore-extravaganza fared at the world's most prestigious film festival: 'Nobody can see everything at Cannes, so I may well have missed even more films that were something special. But among them certainly wasn't Devdas, the first Bollywood film to be shown at Cannes and a pretty silly three hours worth of romance, song and dance, and utterly tasteless - if luxuriant - production design'. 'Not fit to lick the boots of Lagaan, Devdas was once filmed by Bimal Ray, who is a real film-maker. This adaptation looked as if it had been put together by a Hindi Busby Berkeley on a very nasty herb.' The Time magazine film critic, Richard Corliss, was no kinder, at least to begin with. 'Another Cannes first: a Bollywood musical, was part of the official selection, luring Indian mega-muffin Shah Rukh Khan to this dappled Riviera town... (But) Devdas, a three-hour romantic phantasmagoria, got little indulgence from the international critics. Though they sat obediently through dozens of mopey minimalist movies, and one with a brutal nine-minute rape scene, they had a low threshold of pain for a pretty film with pretty people singing of love and loss; exactly one critic (this one) was there at the end.' At the end, however, Corliss becomes placatory: 'Devdas, Saratchandra Chattopadhyay's 1917 novel, has been filmed at least three times before, but surely never with such opulence as director Sanjay Leela Bhansali has lavished on the new version. Reportedly the most expensive production in Indian history, it could well be the most visually ravishing movie ever...' Khan, a total, tragic charmer in the title role, is bookended by two beauties (Madhuri Dixit and former Miss World Aishwarya Rai) with a sad wisdom to match their screen charisma. 'The dialogue is ripe enough to provide song cues for nine fabulous dance numbers. But the fervid emotion and visual chic are what make the thing sing. In just his third feature, Bhansali seems a young master of the medium.' If The Guardian and Time have their reservations, others are silent. Film magazine Screen International, which hosts a Cannes 2002 mini-site on its web page, only mentions Devdas as one of the official entries at the festival. The BBC web site is also terse. 'The Cannes line-up proves the increasing popularity in Europe of movies in India. Song-and-dance feature, Devdas, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali, will be shown out of competition in a special screening during the festival,' it says. But back home, the Devdas wave continues, with its presence at Cannes being seen as another national victory after Lagaan. As Bhansali puts the last finishing touches to his film, set for release at the end of this month, every move of his is reported in the headlines, though the man himself hardly speaks to the press. A record 1,000 prints of Devdas are being readied, amid speculations as to where so many distributors will come in from. The Indian edition of the film will be even longer than the one shown at Cannes. Not many in the country have watched the film. Those who have are gushing. That's how the West, too, reacted. 'The response at Cannes was absolutely fantastic,' says Bhansali's public relations person.