Update, 5/18: Read early reviews of R U There here.

A movie about Second Life and gaming is screening at this year's prestigious Cannes Film Festival, which opens today. The name of the film is R U There, a Dutch/French production partly shot in Taipei, and partly in Second Life. It's about a professional gamer who falls in love with a beautiful Taiwanese girl, who invites him to deepen their relationship in the metaverse. Check out the immensely stylish trailer, which sort of suggests Wong Kar-Wai meets CounterStrike:

RU There is screening in Cannes' Un Certain Regard selection, which is reserved for international movies that are "original and different" in a noteworthy way. Previous entries include last year's acclaimed hit Precious, Hou Hsiao Hsien's Flight of the Red Balloon, and Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly. (Which as it happens, was promoted in Second Life.) Competitively, R U There is up against movies like Socialisme, by Jean-Luc Godard, who's one of the world's greatest living directors. In other words, this is a very big damn deal.

RU There was directed by David Verbeek, who occasionally visits SL as the avatars "LilyRukai Camino" and "Cameraman Haiku". I tried to get in touch with him, but being in Cannes at the moment, he's somewhat tied up. Fortunately I was able to interview the film's editor, Sander Vos, who introduced Verbeek to Second Life in the first place. "David is fascinated by the contradictions of modern life versus the needs of the human soul," as Sander put it to me. "While we were editing his previous film, I was in SL on a daily basis and I showed him around." (Vos' SL avatar is "RL Karkassus".) What he saw there and what Sander told him inspired Verbeek to include Second Life in his next project: