The Truth. (PG.)
Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke, Clémentine Grenier, Manon Clavel, Christian Crahay. Mostly subtitled. Streaming on Curzon Home Cinema. 107 mins.
The winning of a major award – preferably an Oscar, but Cannes if that's all you can manage – kicks open a window of opportunity for the recipient, a one time chance to do that project you've always dreamed of. After picking up the Barn Door at the 2018 Cannes festival for Shoplifters, Japanese director Koreeda has chosen to trade that in to make a French film. It isn't much of a film, but it is very French. I suspect Hawke appearance in the film is simply to be a yard stick to measure just how authentically French everything else is.
Deneueve is an iconic movie star who has just published her memoir. She is a vicious, shallow madam but the public love her. Binoche is the daughter she largely ignored as a child, visiting her on the set of her latest film. The pair bicker and argue about the past and Deneuve gets to deliver some crushing putdowns. If the film is about anything at all its about the tricks memory plays, but what it is mostly about is Look, Catherine Deneuve is in my film! Even Binoche is there strictly as support.
The Truth doesn't offer up much of anything which is even more frustrating as the film that Deneueve is making – a sci-fi drama about a woman who is stringing out a terminal illness by flying off into space and popping back every decade or so to see her daughter grow old – seems rather intriguing.
Koreeda's international standing is built on a series of low key, retrained studies of the human condition: he is just about the last person who should be making a film about French actors.
Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda
Starring Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke, Clémentine Grenier, Manon Clavel, Christian Crahay. Mostly subtitled. Streaming on Curzon Home Cinema. 107 mins.
The winning of a major award – preferably an Oscar, but Cannes if that's all you can manage – kicks open a window of opportunity for the recipient, a one time chance to do that project you've always dreamed of. After picking up the Barn Door at the 2018 Cannes festival for Shoplifters, Japanese director Koreeda has chosen to trade that in to make a French film. It isn't much of a film, but it is very French. I suspect Hawke appearance in the film is simply to be a yard stick to measure just how authentically French everything else is.
Deneueve is an iconic movie star who has just published her memoir. She is a vicious, shallow madam but the public love her. Binoche is the daughter she largely ignored as a child, visiting her on the set of her latest film. The pair bicker and argue about the past and Deneuve gets to deliver some crushing putdowns. If the film is about anything at all its about the tricks memory plays, but what it is mostly about is Look, Catherine Deneuve is in my film! Even Binoche is there strictly as support.
The Truth doesn't offer up much of anything which is even more frustrating as the film that Deneueve is making – a sci-fi drama about a woman who is stringing out a terminal illness by flying off into space and popping back every decade or so to see her daughter grow old – seems rather intriguing.
Koreeda's international standing is built on a series of low key, retrained studies of the human condition: he is just about the last person who should be making a film about French actors.
