The Truth (2020)

Film: The Truth (2020)
Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke, Ludivine Sagnier, Clementine Grenier, Manon Clavel
Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

At some point I think it'd be fascinating to do some sort of mini-series about "what followed the Palme?"  I have to imagine after winning the "Nobel Prize of Cinema" it's difficult to go back & create something that, at the very most, can equal your monumental achievement, and more-than-likely result in you underwhelming the audience.  Hirokazu Kore-eda had that task with The Truth, the followup to his lauded Shoplifters which won both the Palme & an Oscar nomination in 2018.  Kore-eda's strategy seems smart here-he goes completely to a different world with his characters, even adopting a different language (the movie is largely in French, sometimes in English), and so there's little trace to his magnum opus, though you can still see the intelligent lines that ran through Shoplifters in this movie, even if it's lighter & more intertwined with a version of reality centering around cinematic icon Catherine Deneuve.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about Fabienne Dangeville (Deneuve), a beloved French actress who has recently written a book and is filming a Sci-Fi picture called Memories of My Mother which Fabienne isn't taking seriously, and doesn't consider to be particularly good.  Her daughter Lumir (Binoche), actor son-in-law Hank (Hawke), and granddaughter Charlotte (Grenier) are visiting her, and we learn that Lumir hasn't read the book yet, and doesn't agree with the depiction of her childhood in it.  She is upset that her mother seems more present in her life than she actually was in the memoir, and that her mother didn't mention Sarah, an actress whom Lumir looked up to, and whom she feels a kinship with in a way she didn't with her mother.  As the film goes on, the women hash through the jealousies, both professional & personal that Fabienne felt to Sarah, stealing away her daughter, and how she wishes things could be different (but not so much she'd do things differently).  The women end on better terms, and with Fabienne realizing a new zest for her career & life.

The movie is fluffy light stuff on first glance.  It's bliss having actors as good as Binoche & Deneuve in the leads, and the supporting cast is delicious-not just Grenier & Hawke, but also Ludivine Sagnier as a supporting actress in the film whom Fabienne befriends and Manon Clavel as Manon (not a lot of heavy lifting there), an up-and-coming actress who is proclaimed as "the next Sarah," which makes Fabienne standoffish toward her.  However, the movie has deeper layers in the work than you'd expect as it goes, and I ended up kind of liking it more than I should have.  Despite the fault lines (there are detours with Fabienne's staff that feel underwritten, as do some aspects of her complicated relationship with Sarah), in a similar fashion to Shoplifters the movie doesn't give easy answers, but it does give resolutions that fit people who are established in their lives & unlikely to change but for a fraction.

The movie's best asset is Deneuve, and the weird meta-fiction that Kore-eda gives to her in the script. While she's obviously playing a fictional character, Deneuve's Fabienne is so intertwined with Deneuve that they use actual facts from the actress's life to flesh out the character, like that she has two Cesars (which Deneuve does) and that she was going to work with Alfred Hitchcock before he died (Deneuve was supposedly set to star in The Short Night with Clint Eastwood, which would've been Hitch's last film if it had ever gotten off-the-ground).  They even give Fabienne a moment to shade Brigitte Bardot, with whom the real-life Deneuve once shared an ex (Roger Vadim).  This adds layers onto Deneuve's performance, and makes it some of her most interesting work in a while-when is she playing herself versus playing her fictional counterpart?  It's a fun game to play as you watch a deceptively sly picture.