Baz Luhrmann’s take on The Great Gatsby starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan, will lay on the glitz when it opens the 12-day fest on Wednesday evening.
Gatsby is not in the quest for the Palme, but behind the razzmatazz of its European premiere, Luhrmann is under pressure to deliver F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Roaring Twenties classic to a new generation.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Michael Douglas, Matt Damon and Ryan Gosling are among the A-listers expected to tread the Riviera red carpet, while Steven Spielberg heads an equally star-studded jury that includes Nicole Kidman, Ang Lee and Christoph Waltz.
In one of the most keenly-awaited films in competition, Douglas plays the flamboyant entertainer Liberace in Soderbergh’s biopic Behind the Candelabra.
The film is apt in a watershed year for gay rights in the US, with more and more states granting gay people the right to marry or adopt.
Soderbergh, who shot to prominence after winning the Palme d’Or in 1989 with Sex, Lies, and Videotape, has complained that Hollywood studios refused to fund the new feature as it was “too gay.” In the end, it was financed by US payTV.
The Coen Brothers, last in competition in Cannes in 2007 with No Country for Old Men, have made the official selection this year with Inside Llewyn Davis, the story of a singer-songwriter set amid the 1960s New York folk scene.
Polanski, who turns 80 in August, returns with La Venus a la Fourruwre (Venus in Fur), a drama starring his wife, French actress Emmanuelle Seigner.