Hirokazu Kore-eda has long been a perceptive observer of fragile family dynamics. In the director’s first film set outside Japan, he trains his camera on the testy relationship between a weathered Parisian movie star and her screenwriter daughter visiting from New York. Kore-eda cleverly casts Catherine Deneuve as diva Fabienne, whose new memoir doesn’t match her daughter Lumir’s (Juliette Binoche) recollections. Fabienne stars in a film-within-the-film called Memories of My Mother, about a daughter who grows older as her mother remains frozen at the same age. Another scene sees her tell her granddaughter a fairytale about a witch with a heart of stone who turns her husband into a turtle.
The parallels drawn between Fabienne’s life and the stories she’s drawn to are a little on the nose. “What matters most is personality! Presence!” she declares, determined not to fade into obscurity. Deneuve’s luminous performance ensures she won’t.
Available to watch on curzonhomecinema.com
