CANNES, France (Reuters) - Clint Eastwood directs Angelina Jolie in a gripping 1920s drama based on the true story of a woman whose search for her missing son forced her to confront the Los Angeles police and a serial child killer.

There was confusion on Tuesday over the name of the movie, one of 22 entries in the main competition at the Cannes film festival this year. It was originally titled “The Changeling” but production notes re-named it “The Exchange”.

Based on archives from Los Angeles City Hall that were about to be destroyed until screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski rescued them after a tip off, the story is about working class mother Christine Collins whose nine-year-old son goes missing.

A police force in desperate need of positive publicity says they have found the boy, but when Collins insists the child is not hers she is subjected to a smear campaign and sent to a psychiatric ward for five days.

With the help of a charismatic pastor, played by John Malkovich, Collins goes in search of the truth, exposing corruption and incompetence in the police force along the way.

Separately, a serial child killer is caught, and the two storylines begin to emerge.

“This woman, through her tenacious attitude, brought down the whole police department and the whole political structure — the mayor was not re-elected,” Eastwood said after a press screening, where “The Exchange” was applauded loudly.

“It’s a great study on human characteristics, this one mother fighting against the whole city,” added the 77-year-old.

Jolie, a mother who is also pregnant with twins, said it was a difficult role to play. The actress, 32, started working with Eastwood shortly after making “A Mighty Heart” in which she portrayed the pregnant wife of slain reporter Daniel Pearl.

“Certainly so much of it is being a mother and imagining, if this was happening to me, my pain and my frustration,” she said.

“I lost my mother a few months before the film and to me she (Collins) is very much like my mother. My mother was very passive in many ways and very, very sweet but when it came to her children she was a lion.”

MYSTIC RIVER, DIRTY HARRY

Comparisons were drawn during the press conference between “The Exchange” and Eastwood’s “Mystic River”, which stars Sean Penn who is also president of the jury deciding the awards in Cannes this year.

Eastwood even saw parallels with his role as a tough cop in “Dirty Harry”, released 37 years ago.

“It also showed a tenacious police officer who wanted to fight against political bureaucracy all for the defense of the victim,” he said.

Asked why he did not have an acting role in his latest movie, Eastwood replied:

“I’m too young to play one of the boys. There was just no role for me and I’m gradually, as you’ve probably noticed, working my way around to spending more time behind the camera than in front. That’s something that is an inevitability.”

Early critical reaction suggests Eastwood could be a strong contender for the coveted Palme d’Or for best film in Cannes.

“If you are going to come to a film festival that has a competition, you might as well be in the competition,” he said.

“Whether you win something or not is not the point of it. A lot of good films have won and a lot of not-so-good films have won. That’s the same with any awards …like the Academy Award … and what happens happens.”

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Sorry, guys. Jessica Alba’s “taken” status is legal. The 27-year-old actress quietly wed producer Cash Warren on Monday, her publicist, Brad Cafarelli, said Tuesday in an e-mail to The Associated Press. Cafarelli didn’t give further details.

The pair became engaged in late December following Alba’s announcement that she’s expecting a baby with Warren, 31. They met on the set of the 2005 film “The Fantastic Four,” which costarred Alba and employed Warren as a director’s assistant.

Her wedding, first reported Monday by People.com, was such a quiet affair that even her brother, Josh Alba, was apparently caught off-guard. When reached by Us Weekly magazine with the news, he responded: “My sister!? I’m going to have to call her!”

When asked if Warren was good husband material, Alba said: “Well, he’s my brother-in-law now!”

Alba’s recently appeared in “Awake,” “Good Luck Chuck” and “The Ten.” The sex symbol first gained fame as an action star on TV’s “Dark Angel,” then in films including “Fantastic Four” and “Sin City.”

Besides a baby, Alba is also expecting two films this summer: “Meet Bill,” in which she plays a lingerie saleswoman who helps turn life around for a loser, and “The Love Guru” with Mike Myers as a self-help weirdo trying to patch things up between a hockey star and his wife.

Alba charts high in men’s magazines’ lists of the “sexiest” women in the world. She was No. 1 to FHM readers last year, and dropped to No. 3 this year (with “Transformers” star Megan Fox claiming the top spot). Alba sued Playboy in 2006 for putting her picture on its cover without her consent, but dropped the action the following month when Playboy donated to two charities Alba supports and Hugh Hefner wrote a letter of apology.

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Former world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson has been cheered at the Cannes film festival after the red-carpet premiere of a moving documentary on his turbulent life.

Tyson, dressed in an elegant dark grey suit with a white pocket handkerchief, mounted the stage late on Friday after the screening at the world’s biggest cinema showcase, flanked by director James Toback.

“Jim, he just elicited all this stuff out of me, I don’t know how he did it,” a visibly moved Tyson said as Toback fought back tears.

The retired fighter, who has put on weight in recent years, flew to the French Riviera from his suburban Las Vegas home with a major entourage for the premiere of “Tyson”, which combines more than 30 hours of interviews with highlights of his boxing career.

Toback, best-known for his 1978 drama “Fingers” which was remade into a hit French movie in 2005, said before the screening that he believed he had succeeded in presenting Tyson as a “complex and iconic and noble human being”.

Festival chief Thierry Fremaux, who introduced the picture, described “Tyson” as “a very special film that conveys the memory of a man and the memory of a sport.”

The picture takes Tyson, who turns 42 next month, from his humble beginnings on the mean streets of Brooklyn to his phenomenal rise as a boxing champion, through his epic fall marked by addiction, humiliation in the ring and a rape conviction.

Told entirely from Tyson’s point of view, the portrayal is flattering, showing the gentle giant with the high-pitched voice and a lisp taking the long view of his rocky past and extraordinary career.

Tyson left the cinema before the film began, shaking hands and posing for pictures with fans.

The documentary is screening in the festival’s “Un Certain Regard” sidebar section. The Cannes film festival runs to May 25.

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LOS ANGELES - Canadian country star Shania Twain has separated from her husband of 14 years, reclusive record producer Robert John “Mutt” Lange, People magazine reported on Thursday.

It quoted a spokesman as saying, “This is a private matter and there will be no further comment at this time.” Twain, 42, and Lange, who is in his late 50s, have a a 6-year-old son named Eja.

The marriage between the sexy singer and the secretive Svengali famed for his work with such metal acts as AC/DC and Def Leppard, was an unlikely — but highly lucrative — partnership.

Lange produced Twain’s three blockbuster albums, which have each sold more than 10 million copies in the United States. The glossy efforts, complemented by steamy video clips, crushed the barrier separating country and pop.

Like many men, Lange was entranced by one of Twain’s videos, the first of many in which she showed off her famed belly button. He called her persistently, and they agreed to collaborate professionally. Six months after they eventually met, they married in December 1993.

Unlike many superstar producers, Lange has not given an interview in decades and is rarely photographed. He did not even appear in the official wedding photo Twain distributed to the media.

But his fingerprints were all over Twain’s huge trilogy of albums, 1995’s “The Woman in Me,” 1997’s “Come on Over,” and 2002’s “Up!” More arena rock than traditional country, the albums were packed with catchy hooks and lyrics celebrating female empowerment.

The couple avoided the spotlight by dividing their time between a chateau near Geneva and a luxury farmhouse in New Zealand.

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