Cannes set to open, with fans, stars and tight security

Actress Nicole Kidman (L) and actor Tim Roth are seen at the Grand Journal de Canal+ television studio on the Croisette on the eve of the opening of the 67th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes May 13, 2014. [Photo/Agencies]

Cannes to open with glitz, glamour and dash of scandal

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Kidman and other stars will ascend the famous red carpet on Wednesday night to the cinema inside the Palais des Festivals et des Congres for the glittering opening event under the watchful eye of the world's media, which has staked out viewing spots and parked stepladders for photographers days in advance.

Trade talk of a dispute between the film's French director, Olivier Dahan, and its American distributor, producer Harvey Weinstein, has only served to reinforce the reputation of Cannes for producing a scandal or two, which festival artistic director Thierry Fremaux sees as a good thing.

"Controversy by the way is also something which built Cannes and which makes people focus on films. And these are not really really strong or - how can I say - in a way it's nice, it's part of the folklore of Cannes, it's part of the passion of cinema," Fremaux told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.

Since the selection of the 18 films to be presented in competition was unveiled in April, critics have said the festival this year might suffer from a lack of stars on its red carpet. But Fremaux said he was happy with the selection.

"The choices we have made are the choices we have made and now we are going to deliver the selection to the press and I feel quite comfortable because first we love the movies we've picked up, we think we did the best with the films which were submitted to us," he said.

Even if Cannes remains the one event on the crowded film festival calendar that the big players most want to attend, a senior editor at US entertainment magazine Variety said it was scaling back.

"You see Cannes scaling back. And you see it ... for Cannes, for Cannes standards it's a little smaller than Cannes usually is," Ramin Setoodeh said.

"That said, it's still a very big festival, you have stars from Nicole Kidman to Robert Pattinson, to Kristen Stewart, Ryan Gosling had his directorial debut here at Cannes. So it's still a pretty big festival, it's just not as big as Cannes has always been."