Behind the scenes: Cannes Film Festival, day one

GOWN RENOWN: Four hundred hours is how much time it took a team of seamstresses to make the feather-weight gown that Audrey Tautou picked for her role as host of Cannes’ opening ceremony on Wednesday.

The pleated dress in frosted-mint organza and silk muslin is the work of 28-year-old French couturiere Yiqing Yin, who made her entree into fashion less than two years ago.

“Few actresses give the chance to young designers - they usually turn to established fashion houses,” Yin said.

“It was an extraordinary present, a gesture of faith and generosity.”

Media coverage and social-network buzz provide fantastic exposure for a successful frock.

MUSHY PEAS? Steven Spielberg’s career in movies was celebrated in food on Tuesday night as the Riviera resort’s top restaurant hosted the head of the festival jury and his colleagues including Nicole Kidman and Vidya Balan.

At the Palme d’Or restaurant in the Hotel Martinez - where for normal mortals a steak for two costs 280 euros ($361) - the jury’s three-course dinner referenced key moments in Spielberg’s 40 years behind the camera.

The English translation of the menu, though, looks as if it was provided by E.T.: “The quail in predator stuffed with a stuffing rolls of tuna fish in the zests of citrus fruits, shaves of asparagus from Grasse and pulp of peas.”

COSTA FORTUNE: Spielberg’s lifestyle in Cannes has left festival organisers stunned and relieved in equal measure. According to press reports, he flew in aboard a private jet, brought in a massive yacht - complete with “infinity pool” and outdoor movie screen - and rented out a luxury villa to provide accommodation for his family, friends and business people.

But Spielberg himself is picking up the tab for it all, including for the security. “We just tell him when and where he has to be each morning, and he takes care of the rest,” the festival’s director, Thierry Fremaux, told the French daily Liberation. “Yes, it obviously makes some savings for us.”

EMBARGO ROW: British newspapers have challenged Warner Brothers by breaking the European embargo on reviews of “The Great Gatsby” ahead of its showing in Cannes.

The Daily Mail, Independent, Daily Telegraph and Guardian all refused to play ball, as the movie has already been seen by millions in North America, where it opened five days earlier.

As in the US, British reviewers gave Baz Luhrmann’s movie mixed reviews. The Guardian called it “fantastically unthinking and heavy-handed”. The Mail however praised it as an improvement on the 1974 version and hailed Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance as enigmatic bootlegger Jay Gatsby as “superb”.

TAIWAN FOR SCORSESE: Filming for “Silence,” the eagerly-awaited next work by master moviemaker Martin Scorsese, will start in Taiwan in July next year, his French publicists say.

An adaptation of a novel by Japan’s Shusaku Endo, “Silence” recounts the perils of two Jesuit priests, who travel to 17th-century Japan in defiance of a ban on Catholicism and on almost all contact with foreigners.

Andrew Garfield - in the limelight for “The Amazing Spider-Man” and “The Social Network” - is lined up for one of the leading roles.