Cannes controversy

Savaged as “shameful” before it even comes out, “Grace of Monaco” opened the Cannes Film Festival yesterday.
Actress Nicole Kidman and “Grace” director Olivier Dahan are just some of the big names due to tread the red carpet for the premiere in the glamorous Riviera resort.
Ryan Gosling, David Cronenberg, Sophia Loren and jury head Jane Campion were also set to make an appearance during the 67th Cannes Film Festival, where directorial big guns will go head-to-head in a year of comebacks, swansongs and star debuts.
Dahan’s “Grace of Monaco” has been embroiled in not one but two rows as the princely children of the late actress-turned-princess and powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein blasted the director’s version of the film.
Rather than illustrate her life as whole, the movie focuses on a period of high tensions between Monaco and France in 1962 that prompted the princess to turn down an offer by Alfred Hitchcock to return to her beloved acting.
Prince Albert II and his sisters Caroline and Stephanie insist that the film, which also features British actor Tim Roth as Prince Rainier, does not accurately portray events involving their mother.
The Grimaldis have publicly disavowed a film they say “has been misappropriated for purely commercial purposes”.
“This film should never have existed,” Stephanie of Monaco told local daily Nice Matin.
To which Dahan retorted that the princely family had not seen the film and was basing its allegations purely on the trailer.
“They want to control their image, defend their family and at the same time it’s business,” he told the same daily.
Jeffrey Robinson, the author of a biography on Grace who met her and read the script, also savaged the film in an interview with Nice Matin.
“The authors of the screenplay don’t know anything, did not capture her personality, did not meet her at the time. It’s shameful and they’re not honouring her.”
As if this was not enough, the Frenchman has been locked in a long-standing tussle with Weinstein, the film’s distributor in the United States.
Both have been at loggerheads over the final version of the movie – whose release has been delayed several times – with Dahan accusing Weinstein of wanting a new, breezier edit he has described as “catastrophic”.
The festival will see Gosling showcase his directorial debut “Lost River”, and films by Xavier Dolan, Jean-Luc Godard and “Men in Black” actor Tommy Lee Jones will also compete.
On the sidelines of the competitions, action stars Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford and Arnold Schwarzenegger will take a trip to the resort on board a tank to promote their film “The Expendables 3”.
And to seal off this year’s festivities, Quentin Tarantino will go back in time and showcase “A Fistful of Dollars” at the closing ceremony, in a glitzy celebration of the 50th anniversary of spaghetti westerns.