THE TRUTH pairs Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche for the first time, as a celebrated actress and her estranged daughter whose tentative reunion offers an opportunity to either repair or irrevocably fracture their relationship.
Denueve plays Fabienne, a film star, a much loved, larger than life icon of French cinema. No stretch there.
When she publishes her memoirs, her estranged screenwriter daughter Lumir returns to Paris from New York for the occasion, with her struggling actor husband Hank (Ethan Hawke) and their young daughter Charlotte (Clémentine Grenier) in tow.
Lumir is livid that her mother’s autobiography is riddled with omissions and embellishments, especially with regard to the mother daughter relationship and the relationship with the great artistic rival of her past, Sarah Mondavan.
Fabienne herself has no time for explanations and small talk; she’s preparing for her next film, a science-fiction drama, cast alongside a rising new talent touted as ‘the next Sarah Mondavan’.
Lumir isn’t alone in feeling slighted by Fabienne’s selective memory memoir – Fabienne’s long-suffering assistant quits because of his redaction from the book, forcing the mother and daughter into an awkward working relationship, rehearsing and rewriting her mother’s role in the film.
THE TRUTH is written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda, who made the magnificent Shoplifters last year. The film shows his evident Francophilia and his great felicity with eliciting wonderful performances from children.
THE TRUTH shows just how elastic truth can be. Subjective, selective and elastic, ah, yes, I remember it well, goes the old song, with two people viewing a shared experience quite differently in hindsight.
What Hirokazu Kore-eda might be showing us in THE TRUTH that the past should not, and in truth, cannot be the custodian of the truth. The truth is only true in the present and in the hope and joy of the future.
THE TRUTH is about accepting the truth of people – the truth of their goodness, the truth of their flaws, the truth of their failings, the truth of their humanity.
THE TRUTH opens Boxing Day at Palace Cinemas, Dendy Cinemas, Roseville Cinema and Hayden Orpheum