Someone got left on the cutting room floor of Tom Cruise’s career retrospective montage at the Cannes Film Festival.
She may have been married to the superstar for more than a decade and appeared in three of his films, but there was nary a shot of Nicole Kidman to be found in the comprehensive series of clips from Cruise’s long career.
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Sure, “Days of Thunder,” the film that Kidman and Cruise met cute on, was represented, but no footage of the two of them in a torrid embrace was on display. Instead, it was only shots of Cruise behind the wheel of a very fast car.
Yes, there were clips from “Far and Away,” the sprawling historical epic in which Cruise and Kidman appeared as Irish immigrants seeking their fortune in 1890s America, with dodgy accents to boot. Here, though, Cruise was glimpsed riding a horse. No Kidman to be found.
And, of course, “Eyes Wide Shut” made the grade, it being the final film from auteur-iest of auteurs Stanley Kubrick (the French love their filmmakers!). That erotic drama featured Cruise and Kidman as a married couple whose relationship is challenged by the wife’s admission that she contemplated having an affair. But Cannes didn’t go with anything from the pair’s wrenching confessional moments. Instead, Cruise is glimpsed removing a mask.
Other Cruise co-stars were on display in the roughly 10-minute piece, which ran both before the glamorous Cannes premiere of “Top Gun: Maverick” and at a Master Class with the actor that was held on Wednesday afternoon. There was Dustin Hoffman (“Rain Man”), Kristen Dunst (“Interview With the Vampire”), Renée “you complete me” Zellweger (“Jerry Maguire”) and Penelope Cruz (“Vanilla Sky”). There was also plenty of shots of Cruise saving the world as Ethan Hunt from various “Mission: Impossible” adventures.
While Kidman was not seen in the lengthy montage, Cruise did discuss their previous work together at the Master Class. Fielding a question about an emotionally brutal scene in “Eyes Wide Shut,” in which Kidman details a graphic extramarital fantasy to an unflinching Cruise, the actor said, “We worked together to find the tone: [Stanley Kubrick], Nic and I.”
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