Dir: Hirokazu Kore-eda | Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke, Clementine Grenier, Manon Clavil, Alain Libolt, Ludivine Sagnier | Drama, France
Well known for his family-orientated dramas, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s latest sees Catherine Deneuve in a role familiar to her own heart. She plays a French movie star whose newly published biography deeply affects her daughter, played by Juliette Binoche.
From the outset you wonder if her screen persona bears any similarity to her 70 something self. Deneuve still looks stunning as the narcissistic matriarch at the centre of this story of dysfunctionality. Clearly the director loves Deneuve in his first film made outside his homeland of Japan. Binoche is equally caustic as the daughter and script writer who remembers her childhood with mixed feelings. There were good times and bad, but once again, human memory can be complex and unreliable and this is a theme that Kore-eda has mused over before in Without Memory in particular. The Truth is more enigmatic and this does not always work in the film’s favour.
With his usual lightness of touch Kore-eda opens with a scene that will be familiar to the press:. Deneuve’s Fabienne is being interviewed by a sycophantic journalist and she is not making it easy. And once again, we wonder how close Deneuve really is to this woman she is playing. Meanwhile she holds her own family in lip-curling disdain where referring to her son-in-law Hank’s (Ethan Hawke) profession as “Actor is saying a lot”.
Hank and her daughter Lumir (Binoche) have arrived with their daughter Charlotte (Clementine Grenier) to stay at her elegant mansion surrounded by leafy gardens where a turtle called Pierre also roams. An uninvited guest also turns up in the shape of veteran actor Roger Van Hool (The Woman Next Door) who places Fabienne’s ex husband Pierre.
Meanwhile Lumir is expressing her anger at not being sent a copy of the book prior to publishing and feels the relationship between her and her mother poorly reflected. Naturally Fabienne disagrees but it seems the book is merely a PR exercise. The book also mentions Sarah, an actress friend of the family who became close to Lumir, posing a threat to Fabienne, who is starring in a sci-fi film entitled Memories of My Mother with a character called Manon (Manon Clavil), who is purportedly very similar to Sarah. The sci-fi has an interesting relevance here as it is based on a book by Ken Liu, about a dying woman who buys herself more time by escaping to space, remaining unchanged while her daughter continues gets older, Dorian Grey style.
Another person whose nose has been put out of joint by the memoirs is Fabienne’s faithful personal assistant Luc (Alain Libolt). So much so that he resigns just as the Sci-fi film within the film is about to start shooting. He feels aggrieved that Fabienne has never mentioned his devoted service or the fact that he has six grandchildren. Neither does she appear the slightest bit interested in her own grand-children such is her own self focus.
The character who brings out the best in Fabienne is predictably her boyfriend Jacques (Christian Crahay), and more unexpectedly, by Manon. Cleverly Deneuve keeps up the various shades of enigma in a graceful and subtle turn in this complex study of maternal influences and also creative personalities. There are similarities here with Frankie that focused on another powerful matriarch in the shape of Isabelle Huppert, and also The Midwife where Deneuve plays an equally self-serving but bewitchingly charismatic woman at peak of her influence. MT
ON RELEASE FROM 20 MARCH 2020