It’s hailed as one of the most glamorous events in the showbiz calendar, but even the French Riviera can’t escape the unseasonably dreary spring weather.
The Hollywood elite were left with damp gowns after the Cannes Film Festival’s opening ceremony was showered by rain and hit by windy weather ruining their well-planned red carpet looks.
Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan and Nicole Kidman were among the A List stars who were left drenched and clutching onto umbrellas for dear life on Wednesday night as they made their way across the sodden red carpet.
But as the event continued, so did the outpouring of rain, with stars including Carey Mulligan, Freida Pinto, Nicole Kidman and Georgia May Jagger all needing helpers to hold umbrellas over them.
And Leonardo’s Great Gatsby co-star Carey Mulligan experienced the difficulty of trying to remain glamorous in torrential rain.
The actress was hit on the head by an umbrella as she prepared to walk the red carpet.
Several men with umbrellas crowded around her limo to keep her dry as she walked the few steps from the vehicle to the sodden red carpet.
On the dry section of carpet Carey posed with her leading men Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire.
‘There were so many people around me as I got out of the car that I couldn’t move and I got hit on the head by an umbrella.
‘I suddenly went ‘What the xxxx’ and I didn’t realise there was a TV camera in my face recording everything’ she chuckled as she told the Mail.
Even so, she still looked very pretty in a pink couture Dior gown.
Meanwhile, Nicole Kidman said the storms that soaked the Cannes Film Festival Red Carpet didn’t bother her.
‘It’s only rain. It’s pouring out there but I love the rain. I love it,’ she told the Mail.
Over the next 12 days, dozens of the world’s most artistically ambitious films will premiere on Cannes’ global stage. But Wednesday was a day for blockbusters – both the big-budget Gatsby and Hollywood’s most accomplished director of spectacle: Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg is serving as jury president at this year’s Cannes. This year’s jury is an intimidating, starry bunch, including Nicole Kidman, Ang Lee and Christoph Waltz.
Luhrmann’s 3D adaption of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, is this year’s festival opener, a choice that surprised many since the film opened last week in North America. Cannes typically takes precedence over release schedules, but Gatsby sails to the Croisette after a robust weekend haul of $51.1million.
After Luhrmann noted in a news conference that the film had pushed Fitzgerald’s novel to the top of the bestseller list (selling more copies in a week than in the author’s lifetime), DiCaprio added with a grin: ‘And a little film adaptation is doing quite well at the box office.’
Gatsby plays out of competition at the festival, but Spielberg should have his hands full with a slate lacking any obvious favourite. Internationally-respected filmmakers such as Roman Polanski (Venus in Fur), Asghar Farhadi (The Past) and Jim Jarmusch (Only Lovers Left Alive) are to premiere their films in competition.
Teetering along a highwire suspended between two skyscrapers 185 metres up is really not a good the place to be afraid of heights.
