Like it or not, there couldn't be a more appropriate opening attraction for the Cannes Film Festival than Baz Luhrmann's 3D The Great Gatsby. The extravagant Jazz Age festivities that Luhrmann organises embody exactly the glamorous image that Cannes likes to project, while, conversely, the movie's sparkling soirées owe less to actual 1920s America than to a platonic fantasy of an eternal, orgiastic Cannes gala – palm trees, red carpets and all. Never mind that Gatsby doesn't work by any conventional standards as an adaptation of F Scott Fitzgerald's novel. It achieves what it's after, establishing a benchmark for what cinema can be as lavish spectacle in...
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