The Truth about Catherine Deneuve? (Critical)
Hirokazu Kore-Eda makes his first film in France around a movie star, played masterfully by Catherine Deneuve.
Released at the end of 2019 in cinemas, The truth will be broadcast this evening on France 3. Première recommends it.
When a master of foreign cinema decides to arrive 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 exploring the furrow of their work differently. Then, the memory of so many disappointments. Because the list is long of these directors who, upon 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 career peaks of Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Lou Ye and Kiyoshi Kurosawa. The subtlety of their cinema seems to lose all its bearings in a different culture. Without obviously counting the problem of language and direction of actors. How can you direct actors with precision when you have mastered neither the vocabulary nor the musicality of French? Even the most gifted in this area have failed. Impossible to forget the way in which Quentin Tarantino himself led in Inglourious Basterds the career of Jacky Ido, so brilliant just before in Help yourself and heaven will help you, by its directions as hazardous as they are catastrophic. In short, we awaited 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 matter, had nothing to reassure. But, let’s say it straight away, we were seriously wrong. 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” film. He takes over our culture and the small world of our cinema without renouncing his obsessions or denying his subtle way of conducting his stories.
COMPETITION
Here we follow the adventures of Fabienne, icon of French cinema, whose publication of memoirs encourages her daughter, a screenwriter in New York, to return to her childhood home. An agitated reunion placed more under the sign of confrontations than of reconciliation, while the actress is in the middle of filming a science fiction film, where she plays the elderly daughter of an eternally young mother. The opportunity to put an end to unacknowledged grudges and to confront the contradictory truths of each. By choosing to entrust the role of Fabienne to Catherine Deneuve and by surrounding her with the specter of another rival actress in her youth (and implied to be more gifted than her) who has now disappeared, Kore-Eda plays brilliantly with the myth of the star and its link to her sister Françoise Dorléac. All punctuated with well-felt nods to the small world of French cinema, of which we have the feeling that he knows every nook and cranny of every arcana. Her look 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 which can eat up the even the greatest, on this competition which makes us feverish even though we are supposed to have freed ourselves from it a long time ago. This Kore-Eda touch is also obviously found in the exploration of the family, the 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 talks about her son-in-law, an American actor confined to B series, are little marvels of perfidy. And the love-hate relationship that unites him with his family as with his handyman is developed with a masterful sense of writing where unsaid words 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 both of them fair, but their pleasure in playing together, in throwing the worst nonsense at each other as well as the most tender declarations of love or admiration bursts through the screen. Because watched and listened to by a masterful conductor. Kore-Eda’s little music has lost none of its intensity by changing continent.
The Good Stars: funny, melancholic and heartbreaking (review)
