Currently screening at the Cannes Film Festival, writer-director Mike Leigh's Mr. Turner is already building up some positive reviews.  The biopic of eccentric, British painter J.M.W. Turner (Timothy Spall) takes a look at the last 25 years of the man's life.  We'll have a review up shortly, but for now you can get an early look at this excellent first trailer for the film.  It serves to highlight the painter's genius and ability, while refusing to shy away from the man's depression and growing eccentricity in his later years.  It also appears to be quite the star vehicle for Spall, whom Stateside audiences may know best from his work in the Harry Potter series as Wormtail.  Paul Jesson, Dorothy Atkinson, and Ruth Sheen also star.

Hit the jump to watch the Mr. Turner trailer.

Watch the first trailer for Mr. Turner below:

Synopsis:

MR. TURNER explores the last quarter century of the great if eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851). Profoundly affected by the death of his father, loved by a housekeeper he takes for granted and occasionally exploits sexually, he forms a close relationship with a seaside landlady with whom he eventually lives incognito in Chelsea, where he dies.

Throughout this, he travels, paints, stays with the country aristocracy, visits brothels, is a popular if anarchic member of the Royal Academy of Arts, has himself strapped to the mast of a ship so that he can paint a snowstorm, and is both celebrated and reviled by the public and by royalty.