Johnny Depp’s surprise reception at Cannes Film Festival

His new movie, Jeanne du Barry – which stars Depp as King Louis XV – opened the well-known pageant.

The likes of Helen Mirren, Uma Thurman, Elle Fanning, John C. Reilly, Brie Larson, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas all attended the premiere on the Grand Théâtre Lumière.

At the tip of the movie, Depp acquired a seven-minute lengthy standing ovation, as per the New York Post.

The final time the Pirates of the Caribbean star was greeted by throngs of photographers and video cameras was underneath far much less auspicious circumstances within the late spring of 2022 – exterior a courthouse in Fairfax, Virginia, throughout his tawdry defamation trial towards ex-wife Amber Heard.

Last June, a jury awarded Depp a mixed $US15 million ($A22.5 million) in damages after they discovered that Heard had defamed him in a 2018 Washington Post op-ed alleging spousal abuse.

Even if the jurors determined in Depp’s favour, the testimony was lurid and unflattering and neither notable got here off blemish-free within the media frenzy.

That sleazy spectacle arrived after one other authorized circus in 2020, when the actor misplaced a libel case within the UK towards The Sun newspaper, which in 2018 had known as him a “wife beater”.

As a results of Heard’s allegations, Disney booted Depp in 2018 from future instalments of the Pirates sequence, during which he performed Captain Jack Sparrow.

In 2020, Warner Bros. pushed him to go away the Fantastic Beasts sequence, a Harry Potter spin-off.

Outside of a pair small initiatives, his reign in Hollywood appeared useless.

Et voilà! Now, he’s again in grand vogue on the Cannes pink carpet. Just don’t anticipate a triumphant return to the home field workplace.

Jeanne du Barry is a comparatively petit French flick that’s nowhere close to the dimensions of what Depp was doing as little as six years in the past when he was among the many highest paid film stars.

And with the Edward Scissorhands actor turning 60 subsequent month, the times of main horny studio tentpoles are far behind him for causes apart from the news cycle.

Add to that the truth that France and Cannes are typically friendlier to controversial celebs. This is a pageant that has commonly featured works by Woody Allen and Roman Polanski lately – even after each administrators had been accused of sexually abusing minors.

“I don’t know about the image of Johnny Depp in the US,” Cannes director Thierry Frémaux mentioned at a press convention on Monday. “To tell you the truth, in my life, I only have one rule, it’s the freedom of thinking, and the freedom of speech and acting within a legal framework.”

Whatever Americans could consider Depp nowadays, he acquired one other profession enhance this week.

France’s Dior simply re-signed with him for $US20 million ($A30 million), which is reportedly the largest males’s perfume deal ever. He’s the worldwide face of their males’s scent Sauvage.

Still, Depp’s days as a swashbuckling sensation in household movies and even as a killer barber in Sweeney Todd are clearly achieved.

In 2020, a studio head advised The Hollywood Reporter, “You simply can’t work with him now … He’s radioactive.”

And US critics weren’t as pleasant as les followers on Tuesday.

Reviews for Jeanne had been mediocre. IndieWire mentioned “the film burns hot and bright – and quickly flames out,” whereas THR known as it “bland”.

But the French response to Depp may give him one comforting thought: He’ll at all times have Paris.

This article initially appeared within the New York Post and was reproduced with permission