Sight&Sound - 04.2020

REVIEWS

April 2019 | Sight&Sound | 77

Reviewed by Tony Rayns
Koreeda Hirokazu’s French adventure may not
be his most powerful or original film but it’s a
substantial success, not least because he’s brought
a lot of ideas and motifs from his Japanese films
to the party. The Truth consolidates the shift in
his recent work to looser and more conceptual
plotting, but it also reaches all the way back to
his second feature After Life (1998) for some wry
reflections on summing up life trajectories and
the practical uses of artifice. As the work of a
director working for the first time outside his
first language and his own culture, it’s at least
as assured as Like Someone in Love (2012), the
film that Abbas Kiarostami made in Japan.
Catherine Deneuve plays Fabienne Dangeville,
a ‘sacred monster’ of French cinema, a veteran
star whose thoughtless, self-serving egotism
masks deep insecurities about the final phase of
her career and her acting skills. She sparks the
dynamics of the plot in two ways: by publishing
a less-than-truthful autobiography entitled
‘The Truth’, which ruffles many feathers, and by
accepting a senior role in a sci-fi movie and then
needlessly giving a hard time to her director and
her co-star. The person most outraged by the book
is her daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche), who has
always felt that she was better ‘parented’ by her
mother’s friend and rival Sarah than by Fabienne
herself, but it’s Lumir, a US-based screenwriter,
who effectively repairs all the damage by writing
lines for Fabienne to apologise to those she has
upset. In the process, Lumir’s own relationship
with Fabienne starts to come right – even when
Fabienne detaches herself from their moment
of reconciliation to reflect that she could use the
emotion she’s feeling as a performance strategy.
Koreeda has no pretensions to uncovering
deep truths about ‘truth’ or about real and
feigned emotions. His treatment of the lies
and evasions in Fabienne’s autobiography is
broadly comic, and a strand of backstory about
her relationship with a former rival never
escalates into the melodrama that it briefly
threatens to – though it’s neatly dovetailed
with the issue of her jealous reaction to a
young co-star in the movie she’s seen shooting.
The Truth stays light on its feet by contrasting
Fabienne’s otherworldly self-regard with the
very ordinary domesticity of Lumir and her
American husband (Ethan Hawke) and daughter
(Clémentine Grenier); Koreeda typically uses
the child’s gaze as a leveller and the child’s
innocent questions as the oil on the troubled
waters of family tensions. The question of
retirement from work is handled equally deftly
in a couple of scenes between Fabienne and
a favourite restaurateur who’s giving up his
day-job. The flow of incidents throughout is
naturalistic and free from hyped-up climaxes.
To give the whole thing a conceptual
framework, Koreeda turns (as he did in After Life)
to the terrain vague between life-as-lived and life-
as-theatre. The one clearly symbolic motif is the
broken toy theatre which the young Charlotte
finds hidden amongst her grandmother’s
possessions; it’s eventually repaired by Fabienne’s
ex-husband Pierre, a charming old hippie
who turns up at the house unannounced and
then disappears just as quietly. The movie that

Fabienne has signed up to appear in is a sci-fi

story (it’s based on something by Chinese-born

American writer Ken Liu, an on-trend choice)

and the shooting in Epinay Studios involves

a lot of green-screen work which makes the

studio scenes look and feel ramshackle and

‘artisanal’ – very much like the ad-hoc staging of

cherished memories in After Life. That connection

is clinched at the end of the film when Fabienne

announces that she’s come up with a good answer

to a question that a journalist-fan forgot to ask:

what she’d say at the Pearly Gates. We never get

to hear what that answer is, but her confidence

that she’s found it signifies her rapprochement

with her family and her acceptance that her

life and career are approaching their ends.

The outskirts of Paris. Fabienne Dangeville, a ‘grande

dame’ of French cinema, is publishing a volume of

memoirs called ‘The Truth’ and preparing to act in the

sci-fi film ‘Memories of My Mother’, in which she and

rising star Manon Lenoir will play the same character

at different ages. She lives with her current partner

Jacques, a skilled chef. Her screenwriter daughter

Lumir arrives with her husband Hank and their

daughter Charlotte on a visit to celebrate the book.

Tensions surface when Lumir reads the book and finds

what she believes to be a completely false account

of her childhood, and Fabienne’s long-term manager

walks out when he finds himself unmentioned. During

days in Fabienne’s house and at read-throughs and

filming sessions in Epinay Studios, it emerges that

Lumir has never forgiven her mother for her reaction

to the death in a swimming accident of her onetime

friend (and screen rival) Sarah Mondavan – to whom

Lumir always felt close. Lumir’s father (Fabienne’s

ex-husband) Pierre visits the house and bonds with

Charlotte. Fabienne is frosty towards Manon and Luc,

the director of the sci-fi film, and Lumir intervenes

by writing scripts for her rapprochements with

her manager and her colleagues on the film. These

experiences give Fabienne insights into the way to

make the most of one crucial scene in the film, and

she asks her manager to request a reshoot of that

scene. As her visitors prepare to return home, Fabienne

seems much more comfortable in her own skin.

The Truth
France/Japan 2019
Director: Koreeda Hirokazu
Certificate PG 107m 16s

Producer

Muriel Merlin

Original Screenplay

Koreeda Hirokazu

Director of

Photography

Éric Gautier

Editor

Koreeda Hirokazu

Art Director

Riton Dupire-Clément

Original Music

Alexeï Aïgui

Sound

Jean-Pierre Duret

Emmanuel Croset

Olivier Walczak

Sébastien Noiré

Costume Designer

Pascaline Chavanne

©3B Productions,

Bunbuku, M.I Movies,

France 3 Cinéma

Production

Companies

A 3B Productions,

Bunbuku, M.I Movies

co-production in

co-production with

France 3 Cinéma

With the participation

of Canal +, Ciné +,

France Télévisions

In association with

Jamal Zeinal-Zade,

Jasmin Zeinal-Zade,

Margot Zeinal-Zade,

Cofinova 15,

Indéfilms 7, Cinécap

2, Cinémage 13

With the support of

Région Île-de-France

in partnership with

the CNC - Centre

national du cinéma

et de l’image animée,

and Procirep

With the participation

of Le Pacte, Wild

Bunch, Gaga

Corporation

Cast

Catherine Deneuve

Fabienne Dangeville

Juliette Binoche

Lumir

Ethan Hawke

Hank

Clémentine Grenier

Charlotte

Manon Clavel

Manon Lenoir

Alain Libolt

Luc Garbois

Christian Crahay

Jacques

Roger van Hool

Pierre

Ludivine Sagnier

Amy

Laurent Capelluto

journalist

Jackie Berroyer

chef

Sébastien

Chassagne

Hadriel, the director

Dolby Digital

In Colour

[1.85:1]

Part-subtitled

Distributor

Curzon

French theatrical title

La Vérité

A star is worn: Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche

Credits and Synopsis