Review: The Truth

Image courtesy of IFC Films.

Hirokazu Kore-eda's "The Truth" - the Japanese filmmaker's first foray into another language; in this case, both French and English - chronicles the release of a memoir by a revered, aging French actress named Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve), and the arrival of her somewhat resentful screenwriter daughter, Lumir (Juliette Binoche), and her American TV actor husband, Hank (Ethan Hawke), to celebrate the book's debut and to watch Fabienne on the set of some French science fiction film in which she has a supporting role.

Upon noting the various omissions and fabrications in the memoir, Lumir confronts her mother on several occasions, asking her why she failed to tell "the truth" in her book. Fabienne tells her daughter that she "never tells the naked truth" because "it's not interesting." During a scene later in the film, two characters speak about the past and memory, prompting one to note that, and I paraphrase, memory deceives people to no good end, and that what you think you might remember in your past could be your glossed over version of the truth.

The difference between biographical fact and fiction is one of several interesting themes running through the Japanese master's latest picture, which follows on the heels of his Cannes hit "Shoplifters," a film that made my top 10 of 2018. The friction between Fabienne and Lumir parallels the absurd plot of the film in which Fabienne is starring alongside a young actress named Manon (Manon Clavel) of whom she's obviously jealous for her youth, especially because she reminds the viewing public of a once great actress with whom Fabienne was close friends - and whom Lumir considered a mother figure - and who died an early, tragic death.

In the film within the film, a mother played by Clavel finds out she's dying, and to halt the process she travels to outer space to live in an attempt to slow down her aging process. In the meantime, her husband and daughter (played by several actresses of varying ages, including Fabienne as the most aged version of the character) grow older on Earth without her. At one point, the daughter has become much older than the mother, whose years in space have prevented her from growing old. Lumir's precocious daughter asks Fabienne if the science involved in the film's story is valid. "Probably not," she replies.

Much like the outer space mother in the film within a film, Lumir feels like Fabienne has somewhat abandoned her, recalling a childhood in which she was often on her own. Her mother's anecdotes in her memoir involving her holding Lumir's hand as she walked her daughter home from school are, as Lumir points out, all fiction. So, why fabricate? Fabienne, like so many of us, wants to remember the past in a manner that makes her think better of herself than she might otherwise.

Deneuve and Binoche make a compelling and convincing mother-daughter team, and the film's best moments are when the two of them are emotionally jousting. Hawke's role in the film is pretty small, but he brings some moments of levity as Lumir's good natured husband, a self-described "second-rate American TV actor."

For those unfamiliar with his work, Kore-eda's films are often family-centered dramas that are simple in terms of storytelling and gentle by nature. So, some of the more tense moments in "The Truth" might come as a surprise to longtime fans of the director's work. But ultimately, the film bears the humanistic stamp one would typically associate with a Kore-eda film, and there are some pretty moving passages here. This is the director's first film shot in a language other than Japanese, and it's proof that his talents - plus those of his cast - transcend language barriers. This is an engrossing and very well-made movie.