Cannes Diary: Lady Gaga, Mona Lisa and Salvador Dali – in 3D. Ready for the surreal deal?

Lady Gaga, famed for treating her body and wardrobe like a moveable art gallery, is set to play the part of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa in a new film inspired by the surrealist artist Salvador Dali.

Lady Gaga, who was at Cannes earlier this week to perform on the French television show Le Grand Journal, is in discussions to play the smirking subject in the forthcoming movie Dali 3D, a stylised mixture of live action and animation based on the artist's life, which will start shooting in October. Dali will be played by the British actor Alan Cumming, opposite Javier Bardem as Pablo Picasso. "I'm sort of destined for that screen at some point," Lady Gaga told US station SiriusXM Radio in February.

The film centres on a real incident in 1984 when Dali, then 80, was burnt by a fire in his bedroom. In the movie Dali is shown waking up in a hospital. While there, he imagines himself meeting various historical characters, including Picasso, John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

Lady Gaga's scene will involve Dali going to the Louvre to view the Mona Lisa, at which point its subject comes to life, steps down from the canvas and goes for coffee with him.

"It's the natural subject matter for a 3D film," said Steve Arroyave, chief executive of Arrow Entertainment, the movie's sales agent. "He is such an iconic artist it's the perfect means with which to draw an audience into the story."

Talking about a bloody business

tilda swinton, the star of We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lynne Ramsay's much-hyped adaptation of the Lionel Shriver novel of the same name, has some worrying thoughts on child-birth and being a mother.

Speaking yesterday after the film's premiere, the actress said: "It's a murderous business, giving birth. It's a violent place to go... as anyone who has been in that zone knows... it's a bloody business. It's certainly a very bloody business being a parent and it's a really bloody business being a child."

The story explores a mother's guilt about her psychotic teenage son. Swinton has teenage twins, Xavier and Honor.

Australian filmmaker wins first walkout

the australian filmmaker and novelist Julia Leigh, one of the four women in the running for this year's Palme d'Or, has brought about this year's first walkouts with her controversial film Sleeping Beauty. Several critics left the movie on Wednesday, when it was premiered, offended by scenes in which the central character, played by the Australian actress Emily Browning, lies naked on a bed and is abused by a series of men. The character also participates in medical trials for money and is forced to feed a tube into her oesophagus.

"I hope it has a strong impact on the audience one way or another," Leigh said yesterday. "I also hope the tone or the atmosphere allows the audience to use their imagination and get involved with the film." But it seems that many people won't get the chance to be outraged because the movie was panned by critics. The Hollywood Reporter's reviewer, David Rooney, one of those who stayed, said it was "psychosexual twaddle".

'Wartime Wanderers' to reach the big screen

the extraordinary story of how 15 Bolton Wanderers football players signed up on the same day to fight in the Second World War – sacrificing their careers and in one case, life – is to be played out on the big screen.

The movie, Wartime Wanderers, will star Rupert Grint and Rupert Everett, and is based on a 2001 book of the same name. In 1939, led by team captain Harry Goslin and inspired by the war effort, Bolton's team all enlisted in the 53rd Bolton Artillery Regiment. Many of them saw active service.

Goslin was the only one not to return, after he was killed by shrapnel on the Italian front.