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Heath Ledger’s final performance has screened for the first time at the Cannes Film Festival, and the filmmakers aren’t shying away from calling out the importance of the project.

Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, screening out of competition at the fest, even ended with an onscreen dedication: “A film from Heath Ledger and friends.”

Ledger, who died in January 2008, plays a snake-oil salesman type who is found hanging from a London bridge by two members of a traveling theater troupe. The group introduces Ledger to a magic portal that allows him to travel to different fantastical worlds that exist within people’s imaginations.

“There was irony throughout this film and there was even more irony post Heath’s death,” Gilliam told reporters. “I hope he would be pleased with it. I think he would be.”

Film critics may be another story…

While it was always going to be an uphill battle for the film to make an impression as anything other than Ledger’s final outing, reviews are starting to trickle in for the carnival-set film, and while they praise the late actor’s solid performance, they don’t seem to be too overencouraged by the rest.

“The three stars that came to Gilliam’s rescue also make amusing contributions, but it’s hard not to wonder how much better the film would have been with a complete performance by the charismatic and adventurous Ledger,” opines the Hollywood Reporter.

With Ledger dying prior to the film’s completion, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell stepped in to see through the role, playing versions of Ledger’s character as he makes his way through three portal worlds. The titular doctor, played by Christopher Plummer, is a fellow traveling showman who made a pact with the devil.

The Reporter predicts a middling commercial reception, finding the film is neither “intelligent enough nor silly or grotesque enough to become a lasting favorite.”

London’s Guardian, meanwhile, was apparently unable to get past the missing star, writing, “the whole thing is rather sad.”

“I don’t think Terry Gilliam’s film was intended as a tragedy, but that’s how it plays.”

Variety, however, gave it a more promising review, saying Gilliam “has made a pretty good thing out of a very bad situation.”

And while the trade called the film “overly hectic,” it does see success on the horizon.

“With Ledger onscreen more than might have been expected, the film possesses strong curiosity value bolstered by generally lively action and excellent visual effects, making for good commercial prospects in most markets.”

Gilliam initially had shut down the production after Ledger’s death, but he continued on in tribute to the star.

“The choice I made was to close the film down,” the director told reporters at the fest. “I couldn’t see how we could finish it without Heath because we were in the middle of production.”

And the filmmaker says it’s Ledger’s performance that makes the film.

“Heath was enjoying himself so much and he was ad-libbing a lot, which I don’t normally allow,” he said. “He got everybody else going. Everybody was just energized by Heath. He was extraordinary. He was almost exhausting because he had so much energy.

“What I thought was interesting was to watch people filling the void that Heath left. Everybody was just growing to make sure that there was no void left in the space that Heath had left us.”

Ledger’s family, meanwhile, has yet to see the film, but Gilliam has high hopes for their approval.

“What was important for me was just to make a film with Heath’s last performance up there alive and well, and I think they’re going to be delighted by it.”

The film does not yet have a U.S. release date, but is scheduled to open in European theaters this fall.

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A long-awaited sneak peek into Heath Ledger’s final work is finally here.

At the opening ceremony of this year’s Cannes Film Festival, an 18-second clip from the Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus was played for the lucky audience. Dressed in a white costume, Heath addresses the audience of his traveling Imaginarium.

In the movie, Heath plays the leader of a magical theatre troupe who has made a deal with the devil, and take their audience on a journey through their own imaginations. Heath was in the middle of filming the fantasy film when he tragically passed away last January.

Ledger’s role was recast with Jude Law, Colin Farrell, and Johnny Depp, as they play his character Tony as he travels through a dream world. All three actors are donating their salaries from the movie to Ledgers’s young daughter, Matilda.

Currently, the film does not have a release date.

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He is a con man and an outsider. In fact, the character of Tony, at the centre of Terry Gilliam’s new film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, is so hard to pin down that he is played by four different actors: Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law and the late Heath Ledger.

And now the veteran director and former Monty Python member has revealed that his inspiration came from Tony Blair. “He is the kind of man who would say insane things and probably believe them himself,” Gilliam said of the character. “When Charles McKeown and I were writing the screenplay, we were thinking about Blair.”

The film is to receive its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday, although for many months it looked as if it couldn’t be completed.

The death of Ledger at 28 early last year threw the production into disarray until, in a gesture of solidarity, the three A-list actors and friends of the dead star each stepped in to play a different facet of the character.

The film, which also stars model Lily Cole and the singer Tom Waits, tells the fantastical story of the 1,000-year-old Doctor Parnassus, a theatrical impresario who runs a mysterious travelling show. Parnassus (played by Christopher Plummer) has made a deal with the devil promising him his only daughter, Valentina, played by Cole, on her 16th birthday in return for immortality.

To avoid keeping his side of the bargain, Parnassus attempts to negotiate with the devil and enlists the help of Tony and the other actors in the magical theatre’s troupe.

Gilliam and McKeowan, who also wrote The Adventures of Baron Munchausen together, have said that during the filming of Ledger’s quarter of the film much of the dialogue of Tony was improvised by the actor. A spokesman for the production said that, while Blair was a starting point for the character, it developed during filming and that the personalities of other historic figures, such as the disappearing Labour politician John Stonehouse and the murdered Vatican banker Roberto Calvi, were also sources of inspiration.

“The script was written very quickly and then because of what happened to Heath the story changed a bit,” he said.

Waits, Cole and Plummer are due to join Gilliam at the premiere of the film in Cannes, but Law is in final rehearsals for a West End production of Hamlet, while Depp is filming in Puerto Rico.

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