Cannes - AFP
Behind the scenes at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday: THE ELUSIVE MR GOSLING: He was the most keenly-awaited star of the festival, but he proved the most elusive. Ryan Gosling touched down on the French Riviera to present his directorial debut "Lost River", a dark, fantasy, David Lynch-like film that premiered on Tuesday to much criticism and some praise. Even in a place where stardust is hardly in short supply, Cannes was agog. But with Gosling's film not included in the main competition -- meaning there was no press conference -- the media were left desperately trying to track him down for an interview. It was all to no avail with not a word from the superstar Canadian actor/director emerging. The press screening came and went. Still no sign of him. He walked the red carpet, still no word. Then, finally, in the evening he turned up for the festival screening of "Lost River" with the rest of the crew. He thanked his actors and the audience for coming -- and that was it. In a place where film-makers normally revel in the chance to discuss the movie-making process in minute detail, the sum-total of what Gosling said about his film was, well, not very much. He did however bestow one interview on France's "Le Grand Journal", a daily news and showbiz show on private channel Canal+. Asked by Canal+ whether the final version of the film was what Gosling had originally intended, he said: "It is and it isn't. The film is made when you're there and so influenced by your actors, by the environment. "It was great for me, it's the best collaboration I've ever had with people, every actor brought their own energy to the film, they brought with them something new. Where we shot had such an energy to it, a lot of the film involved people from the neighbourhood." He added: "It's an honour to be in the Un Certain regard section. So many of the film-makers I admire are born in that category." DUBBING NIGHTMARE: Gerard Depardieu's latest film "Welcome to New York" in which he plays a Dominique Strauss-Kahn-inspired character having an awful lot of sex up and down the east coast of the US has given its director more than a few headaches. Not least among them was how to dub all the grunting and wailing in the sex scenes into different languages, Abel Ferrara told entertainment magazine The Hollywood Reporter. "This is the nightmare of dubbing, of changing languages," Ferrara said in an interview liberally smattered with the f-word. "It's not even the words he's saying. The words you can match. It's the guy's breath. You get all that on those microphones. And when you start dubbing things in these synthetic studios six months later you can't believe what you're missing," he said. Strauss-Kahn, who was in Cannes last year for a red carpet premiere, has been nowhere to be seen this year. He has announced his intention to sue over Ferrara's movie. The sex scandal that ended both his career as IMF chief and his political ambitions was the talk of the festival three years ago as events unfolded in New York. The film starts with a disclaimer stating that although "inspired by a court case" it is "entirely fictional". The Reporter, however, has pointed out that "anyone with a brain and an Internet connection will know what it's about".