The release pattern for Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, a long-gestated epic featuring Sean Penn and Brad Pitt, continues to spread confusion.

The picture was expected to open late last year, but, following endless postponements, it was entered in competition at next month’s Cannes Film Festival.

Then, to the apparent bafflement of US distributors, who had been planning to unleash the film publicly in late May, Icon Films, handlers of the picture in Britain, announced that

The Tree of Life

would open in the UK and Ireland next Wednesday.

It never seemed sensible to unveil the thing ahead of Cannes and, sure enough, it now seems (we say “seems”) as if it will not open here before the Côte d’Azur jamboree after all.