Cannes Day 3: Behind the scenes

LET FLY: At 81, with three Oscars under his belt, French movie composer Michel Legrand surely has the right to say whatever he likes.

Legrand’s roll call of hits – The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,The Windmills of Your Mind and Summer of ‘42 among them – are in his view part of a glorious era of cinema music that will never be repeated.

“These days, most film music is done by people who aren’t musicians,” he said. “They scratch away on a guitar or press the button on an electronic gadget which goes boom boom. It doesn’t impress me at all.”

BLOOD ‘N’ GUTS: Sex may be considered a bit passe at the movies these days, but directors seem to have no qualms about violence.

Scenes of genitals being set alight and other horrors in Mexican film Heli on Thursday left some in the audience feeling distinctly queasy.

And there’s more bloodcurdling stuff coming up. A trailer shown on Wednesday gave a sneak preview of upcoming films including Ryan Gosling smashing a glass in a man’s face in Nicolas Winding Refn’s movie about the Bangkok underworld Only God Forgives.

Other trailers shown were execution-style slayings in Johnnie To’s Blind Detective and Forest Whitaker being stabbed through the ear in the Cannes closer Zulu.

BEWILDERED OF CANNES: The prize for the most baffling film of the festival so far goes to The Congress.

Critic Jessica Kiang writing for the Indiewire website described the film as every “reviewer’s nightmare” before calming down and settling on “fascinating muddle”.

Simply put, Robin Wright stars as an ageing Hollywood actress who sells the rights to her image and ventures into a future populated with the likes of Muhammad Ali, Che Guevara and Michael Jackson (waiting tables).

Based on Stanislaw Lem’s novel The Futurological Congress, there’s a part-way shift from live action to animation and back again. Conclusion? Confusing... but fascinating.

IN THE DIRECTOR’S CHAIR: Scarlett Johansson is to make her directorial debut with a film adaptation of the Truman Capote novel Summer Crossing.

Set in 1945, the novel tells the story of a 17 year-old debutante who misses a family trip to Paris in favour of a relationship with a valet attendant.

Johansson has been working on the script with writer Tristine Skylar and the Capote estate for “several years”, she was quoted as saying by The Hollywood Reporter.

The international rights to the film will be sold at Cannes.

LARS LAUGH? Once a Cannes favourite, controversial Danish director Lars von Trier was ignominiously booted out of the festival in 2011 for making a Nazi joke about himself at a press conference. On Friday, festival-watchers wondered if he was trying to pave the way to a comeback – or thumbing his nose at the world’s most prestigious movie meet.

His production company Zentropa released a teasing tableau for von Trier’s upcoming Nymphomaniac, an erotic epic whose all-star cast includes Shia Laboeuf, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Uma Thurman and Willem Dafoe.

The film, due for release in December, has already caused waves for it is rumoured to include real sex, as opposed to simulated scenes, using mainstream actors rather than stand-ins.

The picture released by Zentropa and distribution company Trust Nordisk shows the cast in various fake-erotic positions and von Trier with duct tape across his mouth. But whether this is because he has been gagged - or just showing that he is keeping his lip zipped -- is unclear.