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.

OVP: Tristana (1970)

Film: Tristana (1970)
Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Fernando Rey, Frano Nero, Lola Gaos
Director: Luis Bunuel
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Foreign Language Film-Spain)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I am having a lot of health issues this week (not-Covid, for the record), and so other than work I have basically been a vegetable trying to calm said issues, which is why I haven't posted much.  My hope, though, is that by Sunday we'll still get out our four Foreign Film articles (and Saturdays with the Stars is all set to go already), and then next week (stomach-willing), I'll be back to our normal schedule.  Today our article is going to be about Tristana, one of the final films from cinematic icon Luis Bunuel, and a movie made at arguably the peak of Catherine Deneuve's initial stardom.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film feels at once conventional and very film-of-the-1970's.  We have Tristana (Deneuve), a beautiful young woman whose mother has just died.  She is taken on as a ward by Don Lope (Rey), who initially treats her as a father, but then adopts her as his lover, basically rationalizing to her and himself that if it weren't for him, she'd be on the streets, and therefore she owes him.  It's as gross as it sounds, but thankfully the filmmakers realize that it's gross.  Tristana eventually falls in love with Horacio (Nero), a handsome young painter, and is taken in as his lover, but when she gets sick and loses her leg to a tumor she agrees to wed Don Lope (who is now rich after inheriting a large sum from his sister), and in the final moments of the film, she kills him, essentially pretending to call for a doctor when he is obviously in need of medical care, and (presumably) inheriting his fortune.

The film is oddly juxtaposed between the beauty of a young Deneuve (radiant, always, but breathtakingly so so early in her career) with the grossness of the story.  The film's plot, with Don Lope essentially blackmailing Tristana into being his lover, is the kind you'd see in an old movie, but instead of having her eventually love him (which would have happened in an old movie, or, quite frankly Beauty and the Beast), she gets her revenge, and it's pretty cathartic for the audience.  The film has other visually gross elements (there's a scene where Rey's head, in a dream, is banging against a bell), but it doesn't need them-the heinousness of what is happening is already apparent.

Deneuve has a difficult role to play here.  While Rey and Nero have relatively standard characterizations (played well, but still), there's little growth in these characters, likely to show how much Tristana changes (or doesn't...both interpretations have merit) as we go.  There are scenes that don't make sense (like when she flashes a third side of the love square, a young man named Saturna, on a balcony) until the film's final moments, when you understand that Tristana, despite being robbed of her lover and her leg, is still in command, still aware of the effect she can have on men, not just sexually, but in taking what she wants from them, in this case revenge and inheritance.  There's the potential for this character to be an anti-feminist nightmare, but Deneuve doesn't play her that way-she's someone who understands power, and is willing to use her own to gain an advantage on those who betray her.  It's a fascinating, unkempt revenge tale.

In the Name of My Daughter (2015)

Film: In the Name of My Daughter (2015)
Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Guillaume Canet, Adele Haenel
Director: Andre Techine
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I frequently wonder what happens when other countries get our Lifetime movies and don't have a clue about someone like Jodi Arias or Scott Peterson.  I suspect (I don't really watch these Lifetime movies, but have enough context to make an assumption) that they gloss over some of the details of the actual trial and why someone was found guilty or innocent mostly because everyone in the United States, thanks to tabloid media and Nancy Grace, cannot escape knowing every detail of these crimes.  However, these movies will come in as lacking in other countries principally because they presumably don't have that automatic context.  That was how I felt during In the Name of My Daughter, a film based on the famed Agnes Le Roux case of the 1970's, which is quite famous in France but doesn't really translate here automatically in the consciousness.  As a result, the ending in particular felt rushed and a little bit questionable based on the evidence provided previously in the film, making the movie, which occasionally was quite fascinating, a disappointment.

(Spoilers Ahead) The story itself is utterly fascinating, and would have made a stupendous article in Vanity Fair.  A young heiress named Agnes (Haenel) is seduced by a handsome lawyer Agnelet (Canet) and tricked into voting against her mother Renee (Deneuve) in a power play for a rival to gain control of Renee's casino; in return for voting against Renee as the casino's manager Agnes gains access to 3 million francs, which in turn she has in a joint bank account with Agnelet.  Renee is convinced that Agnelet is doing this to spite her, as he didn't receive a promotion that he had been hoping for from him, but she soon realizes that her daughter has been completely seduced by Agnelet and appears unhinged in a Fatal Attraction-style series of scenes.  The film is humming along by the time that Agnes, after a suicide attempt, vanishes and Agnelet eventually claims the 3 million francs as solely his own.

The problem with the movie is that it cannot handle this moment in the story at all.  Up until this point it's a dangerous game of who-is-seducing-whom, with Agnelet's world unraveling (he is a married man with two different mistresses and a failing law firm-he needs the money desperately but can't handle Agnes' adoration and obsession), and one wonders if he will resort to murder.  However, perhaps to avoid a libel suit, the film never actually gives its full opinion over whether or not Agnelet committed the crime, and in fact is very fuzzy over whether or not a homicide even was committed.  We see him go to court years later, and perhaps it is just my American justice centric brain coming into play, but one wonders how it's possible that they even went to trial without evidence of a murder or a body (anyone who has heard a Law & Order ADA give a soliloquy always states that you can't convict someone just for having a motive).  Agnes' body in the film is never found and it's never so much as confirmed that she's murdered, much less that Agnelet did anything other than want her dead.  It's an interesting case, and one that feels like huge clues are missing either in the film or in what happened post production to get him jailed.  With these missing clues, I felt like I had missed out on what clearly was an interesting story and might have been a fascinating movie.

That being said, the performances were all solid.  I loved what Haenel did with Agnes, making her initially just a spoiled rich girl, and then eventually watching what a lifetime of getting "yes" and "of course" said to her did to her when she was presented with something she couldn't have in Agnelet.  Catherine Deneuve doesn't get a lot to do, but her iciness and general poise add levels to Renee that you weren't expecting.  And Canet is appropriately sexy/seductive as Agnelet, never coming across as someone who is clearly using his charm to gain the upper-hand, but you always find yourself drawn to him.  These performances are better than the writing would typically allow, and add a layer the plotting is lacking.

Those are my thoughts on this recent French thriller-how about yours?  Were you familiar with the Agnes Le Roux case, and did you think the film did it justice?  And if you are one of our international readers, what are your thoughts when you come across an American-centric Lifetime-style movie-does it frequently feel like you need more context?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

OVP: Persepolis (2007)

Film: Persepolis (2007)
Stars: Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Gabriele Lopes, Danielle Darrieux
Director: Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature Film)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Foreign language films occasionally get a slight pass from critics because they are different and because they feel new.  This is occasionally because they are, in fact, new in their approach to the medium, but more often it's just the language barrier.  There is a doubly low threshold for critical love for animated films that are in a foreign language, as Persepolis proved a few years back when it won an Oscar nomination and mad props all across the critical community.  While the animation is occasionally inventive, I found the film a bit dull and listless, and the main character annoying, and not in a way that felt particularly compelling or sharp.  The film's approach is more where the plaudits came from, in my opinion, rather than of anything of great substance on the screen.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film tells the tale of Marjane (Mastroianni as an adult, Lopes as a child) as she grows up as a privileged youth in Iran.  We follow her as she explores adolescence, frequently taking moralistic detours and finding herself drawing the world in broad strokes.  She goes back and forth from Iran, and we see her life framed up against the unrest that followed the downfall of the Shah and the rise of the Ayatollah.

One of the first things that really bothered me about the film and Marjane in particular is that the entire story of her youth to adulthood is so rife with cliche that it's hard to believe from scene-to-scene that she's the same person.  Critics may argue that this is a moot point, and they may be right since the film is autobiographical of director Satrapi's experiences, but I think she took dramatic license with the story as it unfolded.  As the movie goes forward Marjane seems to be whatever the plot most needs her to be, learning a lesson in the most absolute terms to underline every "this REALLY happened."  There's a scene late in the film where she gets a man arrested by pretending he made a pass at her and laughing about it to a disappointed grandmother.  The scene is meant to show how flighty Marjane is and how she doesn't consider the consequences of her actions, but the truth seems to be that either the Marjane of earlier in the film has lost mad IQ points or she simply didn't do this, because only a fool could know her grandmother and not know that she would disapprove.  I'll allow some extra forgiveness on some of the troubles with love (we've all been fools in that department), but even there we're left with a woman that seems smart and, more appropriately, self-assured who then watches her marriage crumble into oblivion even though we can tell from the outset that it will end poorly, and she seems self-aware enough to be able to realize that as well.

This story convenience makes the film frustrating.  The animation is interesting, and I loved the juxtaposition of the black-and-white and the color, making her youth that much more relatable to the audience (it feels like it could just as easily be Paris, New York, or London rather than Tehran, and I suspect that was the point).  However, the lead protagonist is too contradictory, and you can't get a sense of her mood.  Some will claim "that's a teenager," but in reality teenagers are relatively consistent and have moral compasses that remain in roughly the same direction as they reach adulthood.  Few teenagers have the wild changes of attitude and opinion that Marjane does, and this feels like a heightened version of the character, but as someone who is trying to instill a larger lesson about the unrest that occurred in Iran in the 1980's and 90's, the directors need a more constant main character, and not one that becomes a series of eye rolls.

As a result, I can't really recommend this movie and while I see why people liked it, I found the film too surface-level and too basic.  I had a similar reaction to Waltz with Bashir (though I liked that movie much better than this), a movie with spellbinding animation but one where the story is too simplistic and too reliant on its assumed prestige.  Persepolis is an interesting failure in this regard, but a failure nonetheless.

Top 10 Women Who Should Join Twitter

While I was doing my daily check-in with all things social media yesterday (anyone else find Pinterest particularly slow?), I was thinking about the people who I wish were on Twitter, but are not.  I started to make a list for a post, in fact, and ended up with six women listed before I got to a guy, and so I figured I’d make this post gender-specific.  Here are the ten women I wish were on Twitter but aren’t:

10. Catherine Deneuve

The gorgeous, icy French actress recently turned seventy (Happy birthday!) and is an icon of French cinema.  She’s worked with Roman Polanski, Luis Bunuel, Francois Truffaut, Jacque Demy, and Lars von Trier-you know those five combined have some epic stories she could start sending out (seriously-has this woman written a memoir?)  She’s also very politically active and is a fashion icon.  Who wouldn’t want to follow her?

9. Sofia Coppola

I promise this list won’t be made up entirely of enigmatic, fashionable women (okay, I don’t promise that at all-if I was straight I’d clearly end up turning into Fred MacMurray in Double Indemnity, brought down by my own personal Barbara Stanwyck).  Coppola regularly finds herself making interesting movies and gallivanting around the world to film festivals and New York and Italy.  For the record, I also think that all of these people should be on Instagram in addition to Twitter.

8. Jacki Weaver

Have you ever seen Jacki Weaver, the deliciously talented woman who won our 2010 OVP Award, in an interview or a speech?  She’s an utter delight-regularly talking about her ex-husbands/lovers and her experiences with directors and her love of acting.  Throw in some recent Senate polling numbers and that’s basically all my Twitter feed is.  Melissa Leo is there Jacki-sign yourself up!

7. Patti LuPone

LuPone is the grand dame of Broadway-every young actress on Broadway wants to be her (and, let’s face it, so do a lot of young actors).  LuPone, though, has something vital to being a great presence on Twitter-she has opinions.  Lots and lots of opinions-she takes great stances about audience etiquette on Broadway (a worthy topic) and wrote a deeply juicy memoir a few years back that would translate well to the occasional shade-throwing tweet.

6. Meryl Streep

In my heart, of course, Meryl is always first place, but that would be too expected so I'll keep her in sixth.  Meryl is funny, elegant, charming, and always nails every interview that she’s ever done.  Plus, she’s worked with every single person in Hollywood, so you know she’d be having great back-and-forths with Jane Fonda or Leo DiCaprio on Twitter.  Come, join the party Meryl!

5. Lauren Bacall

For a while there, there was a rather popular fake Bacall Twitter feed where the Oscar-winning actress slammed Twilight and made up saucy stories about her fellow Golden Age stars.  Wouldn’t it be a hoot to have the frank and delicious real thing on Twitter, telling us what it was like to go to the Brown Derby with Vivien Leigh and Joan Crawford?

4. Pippa Middleton

I know the rest of the world might be “over” her (she’s not even a godparent, sad face), but I cannot get enough.  My day is instantly brightened with some sort of Pippa news and I am waiting to see when she’s engaged.  Plus, this is the closest I’m going to ever get to Kate joining, and you know that Pippa would snap a few candids with nephew George!

3. Tilda Swinton

Doesn’t it feel like Tilda Swinton, who is so intensely quotable and always popping up in some avant garde conversation, is already on Twitter?  It does, but she isn’t, and it needs to be rectified.  The Oscar-winning actress is a fountain of great opinions, is constantly working on interesting projects and with hip artists, and is a fashion icon.  Who doesn’t want to see what Tilda wears on laundry day, or if Tilda Swinton has a laundry day?

2. Jennifer Lawrence

Lawrence has famously taken a stance against Twitter, but we all weren’t going to join Twitter until we did, so it’s just a matter of time Jen.  More than any other actor of her generation, Lawrence isn’t afraid to go there with a naughty story or a saucy aside.  Twitter was born for Jennifer Lawrence to join-let’s get a behind-the-scenes look-pretty please Katniss!

1. Tina Fey and Amy Poehler

Only an idiot would need me to explain why this is something we all need more than oxygen and water.

Those are my ten (err…eleven)-what are yours?  Which famous ladies (or gents) would you like to see on Twitter?