Aside from The Tree of Life, Nicolas Winding Refn‘s Drive is my most-anticipated in competition title at the Cannes Film Festival. The film, starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Ron Perlman, Bryan Cranston, Albert Brooks, Christina Hendricks, and Oscar Issac, will see a release this fall, but we now have the very first clip.

It comes from the official Cannes site (via The Playlist) and it is a tense, perfect little piece of filmmaking. Just this scene seems like an excellent self-contained short. With gorgeous night cinematography by Newton Thomas Siegel (The Usual Suspects, Three Kings) and Cliff Martinez‘s building electro-score, I simply can’t wait to see this thing. Check it out below or in HD here.

Update: The score heard below is actually from Johnny Jewel and titled Tick of the Clock. Originally a song by his group Chromatics, it was remade specifically for Drive.

Synopsis:

Hollywood stunt driver by day (Ryan Gosling), a loner by nature, moonlights as a top-notch getaway driver-for-hire in the criminal underworld. He finds himself a target for some of LA’s most dangerous men after agreeing to aid the husband of his beautiful neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan). When the job goes dangerously awry, the only way he can keep Irene and her son alive is to do what he does best—Drive!

Drive hits theaters September 16th, 2011. In other Refn news, he has just started casting his neo-western Only God Forgives and will then move on to the Logan’s Run remake, reteaming with Ryan Gosling.

What do you think of the first footage? Are you looking forward to the film?