Lights, cameras and even a little action as Cannes kicks off

The 56th Cannes Film Festival kicked off in traditional Riviera glitz fashion yesterday under a cloudless blue sky.

Late sunlight gleamed off the highest balconies on the Croisette, gulls flew over the palm trees and a sea of tuxedos and curiously naff ball gowns swayed across the mile-wide red carpet that leads up to the Palais where all the evening screenings are held. Once you've waved to the seething fans from the top of this vertiginousescalier, you know you've definitely made it.

And the crowds were out in force, bringing the most famous esplanade on the Côte d'Azur to a standstill, as an armed division of photographers clicked and blazed away, and a grotesquely amplified tape machine belted out percussive soul funk.

Some had predicted that Cannes would be quiet this year, with a dozen top names – all with work in progress – failing to show up.

No Tarantino, no Scorsese, no Altman, no Jane Campion. But it hasn't stopped the fans from showing up, just in case the unthinkable happens and Arnold Schwarzenegger, due next week, drops by early.

There are 52 films in competition this year. The only British contender is Peter (The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover) Greenaway with his economically titledThe Tulse Luper Suitcases Part I: The Moab Story. Favourite directors attending are Clint Eastwood (with Mystic River), Lars von Trier, directing Nicole Kidman in Dogville, and the Wachowski brothers with the much-vaunted sequel The Matrix Reloaded.

The movie chosen to open the 10-day film fest was a slice of prime Gaelic jambon entitled Fanfan la Tulipe, a shamelessly old-fashioned swashbuckler about a soldier of fortune who enlists in Louis XV's army to escape having to marry his latest girlfriend.

"Provocative" is probablyle mot juste for a film that explicitly glorifies French military swagger. As the programme notes disingenuously proclaim, "...the 18th century, when life was good, women were easy and men pursued their favourite sport: war".

The hero's destiny is foretold for him by a recruiting sergeant's daughter, Adeline, played by Penelope Cruz; and most of the Cannes fans had turned out to watch the Spanish firecracker wave from the red carpet.

"Duel sur la Croisette'' is the screaming headline on trashy film magazines on the boulevard Carnot, displaying the faces of Cruz and Nicole Kidman, for all the world as if the actresses were scheduled to mud wrestle in the foyer of the Théâtre Debussy. Both ladies will find themselves on the same tile of carpet, but several days apart – Kidman is not expected until the launch of Dogville on Monday.

By 7pm as the music got more deafening and the girlish screams more piercing, the stars began to emerge. The Cannes film jury was a motley gang: it included Steven Soderbergh, director of Traffic and Ocean's 11, a man whose shaven head and NHS spectacles only reinforce his startling resemblance to the Roswell alien; and Meg Ryan posing for photographs with something horrible and flapping attached to her shoe.

But the climactic moment was Penelope Cruz's. Her hair severely yanked back into a tight bun, she was the last celebrity to arrive, wearing a dramatic black ball gown and a complicated three-decker necklace made of fat, tear-shaped green stones. She glided up the stairs on the arm of Fanfan's director, Gérard Krawczyk. No sign of Tom, sadly.

And although Luc Besson, who co-wrote the screenplay, was there, he arrived without his squeeze, the divine Milla Jovovich. Ah well. Maybe they'll all arrive tomorrow. It's a tough life being a movie fan on the French Riviera in May.