Alicia Vikander and Jude Law were greeted with a standing ovation fit for royalty at the Cannes premiere of the brutal historical drama Firebrand on Sunday (21 May).
The movie, from director Karim Aïnouz and set in a blood-splattered Tudor England, stars Vikander as Catherine Parr, the sixth and final wife of the tyrannical King Henry VIII (Jude Law).
According to US insider site Variety, a visibly emotional Vikander motioned for the cheering audience to stop the eight-minute standing ovation or she would cry, as her grinning husband Michael Fassbender looked on from the row behind.
Speaking about the film to the publication, Vikander said: “What’s mostly been dramatised are the wives who didn’t make it. [When I read the script] I immediately thought, ‘Huh, isn’t it interesting that most people know more about the other wives.’ It’s almost like people are drawn to quite grim stories.”
Over the weekend, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon received a nine-minute standing ovation at Cannes, with critics hailing his sweeping American epic as a “masterpiece”.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro, the film stretches to a running time of three and a half hours.
It is an adaptation of David Grann’s nonfiction bestseller, which chronicles the Osage murders in 1920s Oklahoma.
All eyes were on Johnny Depp at the start of this year’s film festival, as his period film Jeanne Du Barry opened proceedings.
His comeback following the viscious US court battle with his ex-wife Amber Heard, which he won, saw him also receive a standing ovation.
Cannes Film Festival runs until 27 May.
