When Catherine Deneuve appears in “The Truth”, she is not simply in character. She is accompanied by a multitude of other previous roles and performances, from former directors and co-stars, old loves, scandals and triumphs, all around her like ghosts. That is often the case now with Deneuve, who, like any enduring star, has become a living testament to her own glory. Even when playing relatively simple characters, it transcends your ordinary limitations.
In “The Truth”, Japanese writer and director Hirokazu Kore-eda cleverly plays on Deneuve’s personality, layers, and meanings. (This is his first movie outside of Japan.) She plays Fabienne, a very different figure to herself, or perhaps more like the fantasy of an admirer of a great French star. With decades of fame behind her, Fabienne has reached a point of decline. She is still active and has started a new movie, but she doesn’t have the lead role and now she mainly plays the star at home, where she falls in love with her loving husband and an assistant. When “The Truth” opens, she is giving an interview, having recently written a memoir (also titled “The Truth”), an imperfect testament to herself.
Like all monuments, Fabienne depends on recognition of stature. The journalist who interviewed her is not only discussing her story, but is also worshiping at an altar that she has always helped to maintain. The first line of the film, “I already answered that question,” Fabienne says sharply, suggests that the interview is not going well. Here and throughout “The Truth”, the apparently spontaneous moment, a side or a glance, carries a depth not yet revealed. While Fabienne wriggles her interlocutor, her demeanor is one-of-a-kind with the roles she plays with great fidelity: the imperious star, the alien narcissist, and the occasional, unnoticed comedian.
You understand how accidental it is when the journalist asks “What actress have you given part of your DNA to?” Fabienne looks up at him with raised eyebrows in a moment she artfully leans toward comedy. “In France, nobody really is,” he says through a screen of cigarette smoke. Kore-eda then cuts off a small group of people who walk through what looks like forests, with their backs to the rear camera. When they clear the vegetation, the image lights up, an effect like the separation of the curtains from the theater, and you see a young woman with a woman and a man. They are on the edge of a large garden that will soon become a stage. Only when the woman turns around do you see that she is Juliette Binoche.
