The Truth About Catherine Deneuve? [Critique]

Hirokazu Kore-Eda makes his first film in France about a movie star, masterfully played by Catherine Deneuve.

Released in theaters at the end of 2019, The Truth will be rebroadcast this evening on Arte, while we have just learned that its star, Catherine Deneuvewould be the president of the next Cesar ceremony. First advise you.

When a master of foreign cinema decides to land in France to set up his camera, two contradictory feelings collide. First, the excitement of seeing such filmmakers take the risk of leaving their comfort zone in the hope of digging the furrow of their work differently. Then, the memory of so many disappointments. Because the list is long of these directors who, by coming to our soil, have lost their splendor, as if prevented from deploying what makes them strong. To speak only of Asians, it is difficult to see in The Journey of the Red Balloon, Love and Bruises Or The Secret of the Dark Room the peaks of the careers of Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Lou Ye and Kiyoshi Kurosawa. The subtlety of their cinema seems to lose all its bearings in a different culture.

Not to mention, of course, the problem of language and directing actors. How can you accurately direct actors when you don't master the vocabulary or musicality of French? Even the most gifted in this area have failed. It's impossible to forget the way Quentin Tarantino himself failed in Inglourious Basterds Jacky Ido's career, so brilliant just before in Help yourself and heaven will help youby his directions as haphazard as they are catastrophic. In short, we were waiting for the French landing of Hirokazu Kore-Eda with these mixed feelings. And his absence last May at Cannes, a year after his Palme d'Or for the marvelous A family affairwas not reassuring. But, let's say it straight away, we were wrong in all seriousness. This Truth even constitutes the perfect exception to the rule we have just spoken about. Both the director of Like father, like son signs both a 100% French and 100% “korean”. So much so that he takes hold of our culture and the small world of our cinema without renouncing his obsessions or denying his very subtle way of telling his stories.

COMPETITION
Here we follow the adventures of Fabienne, an icon of French cinema, whose memoirs are published and prompt her daughter, a screenwriter in New York, to return to her childhood home. A troubled reunion marked more by confrontations than reconciliation, while the actress is in the middle of filming a science fiction film, in which she plays the elderly daughter of an eternally young mother. An opportunity to sort out unspoken grudges and confront each other's contradictory truths. By choosing to entrust the role of Fabienne to Catherine Deneuve and by surrounding her with the specter of another actress who was a rival in her youth (and implied to be more gifted than her) and who has now passed away, Kore-Eda brilliantly plays with the myth of the star and her connection to her sister Françoise Dorléac. All punctuated with well-placed winks at the small world of French cinema, of which we have the feeling that he knows every nook and cranny of every arcana. His gaze is full of mischief but is never cynical because it is regularly crossed by heartbreaking moments – here, a lost look, there a stolen confession – on the daily life of an actress, on this feeling of usurpation that can eat away at even the greatest, on this competition that makes us feverish when we are supposed to have freed ourselves from it for a long time. This Kore-Eda touch is also obviously found in the exploration of the family, a central subject of all his work, which he treats as usual with extreme sensitivity without falling into the slightest sentimentality. The exchanges at the table where Fabienne spills the beans about her son-in-law, an American actor confined to B movies, are little marvels of perfidy. And the love-hate relationship that unites him with his family and his handyman is developed with a masterful sense of writing where unspoken things and explosive exchanges respond to each other without ever stuttering.

INTENSITY
Finally, The Truth is also and above all a treat of interpretations. Because, alongside Catherine Deneuve, absolutely masterful, we find a troupe in tune: from Juliette Binoche to Ethan Hawke via Alain Libolt, Ludivine Sagnier or even the magnificent revelation, Manon Clavel. Not only are they both right, but their pleasure in playing together, in swinging the worst meanness as well as the most tender declarations of love or admiration bursts from the screen. Because watched and listened to by a masterful conductor. Kore-Eda's little music has lost none of its intensity by changing continents.

The Good Stars: Funny, Melancholic and Heartbreaking [critique]