On May 15th the Cannes Film festival will open with Baz Luhrmann's "The Great Gatsby."
The festival is one of the most revered in the world and is known for its difficult and sophisticated audience. As a result many wonder how Luhrmann's film will be received.
The festival is known is for booing many movies and giving lukewarm reviews to opening night films. Most recently Palm d'Or winner "The Tree of Life" was booed by audiences for its experimental style but was still given the event's highest honor.
Other classics to have been booed include Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver," Luis Bunel's "El" and Jeane Genet's "Madmoiselle."
In recent years the opening film has also been met with mixed reviews with the exception of Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris" and "Wes Anderson's "Moonlight Kingdom." In 2010, Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood" scored lukewarm reviews and scored a 43% on Rotten Tomatoes. 2008's "Blindness" and 2007's "My Blueberry Nights" also met the same fate.
"The Great Gatsby" enters the festival having already been released in theaters worldwide. The film scored 49% on Rotten Tomatoes and critics stated "While certainly ambitious -- and every bit as visually dazzling as one might expect -- Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby emphasizes visual splendor at the expense of its source material's vibrant heart." Nonetheless audiences will still judge the picture and it will be interesting to see how they react.
The festival opens on May 15th with a red carpet that is slated to include Luhrmann and the film's stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Tobey Maguire and Joel Edgerton.
Many anticipated films set to premiere include the Coen Brother's "Inside Llewyn Davis," Sofia Coppola's "The Bling Ring," Alexander Payne's "Nebraska," Steven Soderbergh's "Behind the Candelabra," and James Gray's "The Immigrant."
The event closes on May 26th with the Forest Whitaker and Orlando Bloom starrer "Zulu."