Woody Allen film charms Cannes, Lady Gaga surprises

Woody Allen delighted the critics at the start of the Cannes film festival on Wednesday with "Midnight In Paris", in which Owen Wilson travels back in time and meets the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso.

There was laughter and applause from famously fussy Cannes critics at the screening, which opened 11 days of red carpets, press interviews, lounging on luxury yachts and late night partying in the glamorous Riviera resort.

Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, Penelope Cruz, Robert De Niro, Mel Gibson and Johnny Depp are all set to walk the red carpet, ensuring huge media interest and large crowds of fans keen to catch a glimpse of their screen idols.

Gleaming luxury yachts packed the harbour around the giant cinema complex, the rich and famous filled the five-star hotels and organisers hope the 2011 festival lives up to this year's unusually high expectations.

Blockbusters "Kung Fu Panda 2" starring Jolie and "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" with Depp and Cruz both launch in Cannes, as studios return en masse after avoiding the notoriously costly trip to France due to the financial crisis over the past couple of years.

And De Niro is in Cannes as head of this year's jury. "For me to see 20 movies in this amount of time is unusual and it's kind of a bit of a vacation, because I can focus on the films, (and) don't have any distractions that I normally would have in my everyday life, so this is a terrific thing for me," he said.

Underlining the pulling power of the festival, pop diva Lady Gaga put in a "surprise" appearance on the palm-lined waterfront on Wednesday, rehearsing for an evening gig.

Past beats present?

In "Midnight in Paris", Allen, a Cannes favourite, explores the notion that bygone ages are better than the present, so Wilson's character Gil pines for 1920s Paris while painter Paul Gauguin wants to return to the Renaissance.

The 75-year-old Oscar-winning director played for laughs by transporting Wilson into a Paris populated by Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Salvador Dali and other artistic greats.

At one point he runs into Luis Bunuel and suggests the Spanish director make a movie about a dinner party from which the guests cannot escape, a reference to his 1962 film "The Exterminating Angel".

The dramatic change of scene casts a shadow over Gil's 21st century existence, where his fiancee, played by Rachel McAdams, becomes exasperated by his increasingly idiosyncratic behaviour and has an affair with the odious intellectual Paul.

"You know it's a big trap that thinking living in another time would be better," Allen told reporters.

French First Lady Carla Bruni has a cameo role as a present-day museum guide in three scenes, although she cancelled her planned appearance in Cannes because of "personal reasons", feeding rumours in the French press that she may be pregnant.

Allen said he met Bruni when he was invited to have breakfast with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and asked her on the spot to join his cast in a minor role.

"She said I would like to be in one of your movies because I would like to tell my grandchildren some day that I was in the movie," Allen said.

The darlings of Europe's festival circuit -- Pedro Almodovar, Nanni Moretti, the Dardenne brothers, Aki Kaurismaki and Lars Von Trier -- are all vying for the coveted Palme d'Or prize for best picture.

So is US veteran Terrence Malick, back in the limelight with only his fifth feature, the eagerly anticipated "The Tree of Life" in which Pitt and Penn star in a family saga set in the American Midwest during the 1950s.

Women directors feature more prominently in the main competition than usual, although they still account for only four of 20 entries.

Belgium's Dardenne brothers have a chance to become the first directors to scoop the Palme d'Or three times with "The Kid With A Bike" and festival favourite Almodovar will aim to lift his first Golden Palm with "The Skin I Live In".