The Truth: Director Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Nod to French Cinema Propels Ace Family Drama

By Liam Lacey

Rating: A-

Japanese director Kore-eda Hirokazu’s films — including his 13th feature, the 2019 Palme d’Or-winning Shoplifters — tend to focus on ordinary Japanese people struggling with solitude, grief, and memory. Just Google the words “Kore-eda” and “poignant” and you’ll get the idea.

Despite its serious title and somber undertones, The Truth — Kore-eda’s first non-Japanese film — is a completely enjoyable diversion. Starring two grande dames of French cinema, Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche, The Truth is a mistress-class in the art of French close-up acting, from the twitch of a dismissive eyebrow to a pout of disappointment.

Though Kore-eda employs his typical unobtrusive camera work and prismatic narrative style, the setting is different, distinctly French and domestic, which means lots of cigarette-smoking, dining, drinking and pointed dialogue. Ultimately though, even the drama isn’t that important.

The truth about The Truth is that it’s a cinephile’s love letter to 76-year-old Deneuve, studded with posters, clothes, and in-jokes that refer to 60-plus years of screen history as well as details of her biography.
Deneuve plays an imperious, aging actress named Fabienne (Deneuve’s middle name), who has just published a self-serving memoir called, of course, The Truth.

The book’s publication is an excuse for Fabienne’s screenwriter daughter Lumir (Binoche) to visit from the New York, along with her affable, slacker husband Hank (Ethan Hawke) with their preteen daughter Charlotte, an important third figure here.

Charlotte, played by Clementine Grenier, confirms Kore-eda’s genius for working with children. We learn that Fabienne once starred as a witch in one of Charlotte’s favourite movies, and the girl is half-convinced her grandmother can turn people into animals. As evidence, a large turtle in the garden has the same name as Fabienne’s ex-husband, Pierre. And the turtle, Pierre, goes missing around the same time as Pierre (Roger Van Hool) shows up at the back door, looking like a vagabond.

Other men in Fabienne’s life are merely reduced to factotums: Fabienne’s current romantic partner, Jacques (Christian Crahay) doubles as her unappreciated cook. Her long-suffering personal assistant Luc (Alain Libolt) resigns when he reads the memoir, wounded that his years of service have not merited a mention.

The central conflict concerns Lumir’s resentment of her overbearing, under-caring mother, who portrayed herself in her memoir as a model of maternal devotion. The truth, she says, is dull: "I'd prefer have been a bad mother and a bad friend but a good actress."

A degree of forgiveness is achieved when Lumir recognizes Fabienne’s vulnerability beneath her brittle shell. Fabienne’s working on a sci-fi film, called Memories of My Mother, about a mother who goes to space and stays beautiful and young, while her daughter, played by Fabienne, grows old on Earth.

During the shoot, Fabienne is rattled by the film’s ambitious young star (Manon Clavel) who everyone says has a resemblance to an actress named Sarah, who died many years before. Sarah was both Fabienne’s professional rival and a surrogate mother to Lumir.

This film-within-a-film, with its box of mirrors plot about mothers and daughters, feels contrived but it serves to create a space for the droll, fine-tuned performances. Deneuve, who only started winning awards for her acting in the 1980s, continues to surprise. The porcelain stillness of her early beauty served as a screen for the fantasies of her male directors.

With the years, the laugh-lines, the plumpness, the dignity and wry self-effacing humour have become part of her tool set. (I once asked her in an interview if she thought she was getting better with age. “Of course not,” she said. “That would be too easy. It would be nice if we got smarter and better as we got older but that’s not how things work.”)

Binoche, who initially has the more thankless role as the aggrieved daughter and spouse, gets the last words here, in a speech she writes for her daughter to deliver to her grandmother. She’s also the last face of the movie, offering an expression that sends a signal one way, before sending a different message.

The Truth. Written and directed by Kore-eda Hirokazu. Starring Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke, Clementine Grenier, Manon Clavel, Alain Libolt, Christian Crahay, and Roger Van Hool. Available on demand via iTunes.