Kore-eda, who achieved widespread international success with
Shoplifters in 2018, directs a cast of European actors for the first time and seems to have bitten off more than he can chew. The French cast of
The Truth, led by Catherine Deneuve as a vain, insecure, spiky ageing actress and Juliette Binoche as her resentful daughter, is as dependable as you can expect and they have a real chemistry, but Kore-eda seems to afraid to step outside the set conventions of the French middle-class family drama and really bring his own style to the piece. And so we watch them bicker for the whole duration, until the whole affair fizzles out without true resolution and I promise you that it will not stay in your mind the day after. And God knows what Ethan Hawke is doing there as Binoche's American, monoglot husband. Presumably it was enough for the director that he's been in enough films set in France before, but his presence is completely superfluous.
The best aspect of the film is probably the parallel storyline involving Deneuve shooting a sci-fi film as a old woman whose mother is stuck in space and agelessness and can only visit her daughter once every seven years through her whole life lest she die. But this never quite gels with the Deneuve-Binoche dynamic to give it added value.
5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment