Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan will be bringing their Twenties glamour to the opening night of the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby. The glamorous festival on the French Riviera will play host to the big-screen adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's novel, which also stars Tobey Maguire, Joel Edgerton and Isla Fisher in May. Rapper Jay-Z, who scored the film, will also attend the premiere for the period picture, festival organisers said. "It is a great honour for all those who have worked on The Great Gatsby to open the Cannes Film Festival," Baz said in a statement.
"We are thrilled to return to a country, place and festival that has always been so close to our hearts, not only because my first film, Strictly Ballroom, was screened there 21 years ago, but also because F Scott Fitzgerald wrote some of the most poignant and beautiful passages of his extraordinary novel just a short distance away at a villa outside St Raphael." Baz has used modern technology to represent the Roaring Twenties, however. The film will be showcased in 3D, which is only the second time a 3D picture has made it to the festival. Leonardo plays Jay Gatsby in the movie, with Carey as Daisy Buchanan and Tobey as narrator Nick Carraway. Keeping a relatively low profile over recent years, Leonardo said that he was incredibly drawn to the role of Gatsby.
"The idea of a man who came from absolutely nothing, who created himself solely from his own imagination," said Leonardo. "Gatsby's one of those iconic characters because he can be interpreted in so many ways: a hopeless romantic, a completely obsessed wacko or a dangerous gangster, clinging to wealth." It will be the first time that Leonardo, 38, has returned to the festival since 2007, when The 11th Hour, an ecological documentary he produced, was screened there. Baz's films have been showcased twice by the Festival de Cannes - Strictly Ballroom in 1992 and smash hit Moulin Rouge! at the opening of the festival in 2001. The festival runs from May 15 to 26 and Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg is head of this year's jury.
