The Truth’s Hirokazu Kore-eda on working in France with Catherine Deneuve
After winning one of the movie industry’s most prestigious awards, the opportunities were endless.
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After Japanese film director Hirokazu Kore-eda won one of the industry’s highest honours, few would’ve expected his next project would be so far from his homeland.
In mid-2018, Kore-eda won the Palme d’Or, the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival for his poignant family drama Shoplifters, after a celebrated career in Japan with films including Still Walking, After Life, Nobody Knows and After the Storm.
Kore-eda had been making films since the early 1990s, originally as a documentary maker.
It’s the kind of career that tends to attract attention, even from outside of Japan. Among those people were French actors Juliette Binoche and Catherine Deneuve.
The Truth , a French and English-language movie Kore-eda shot in France with a French crew (and without his usual actors), is the director’s first project outside of Japan, and it germinated with Binoche in 2008, more than a decade earlier.
“Originally it was Juliette Binoche who had seen my films and she reached out and said she wanted to do something together,” Kore-eda told news.com.au through an interpreter while he was in Sydney last month.
While in Sydney, the blooming Jacaranda trees impressed him so much, a short walk along a Sydney street became an ambling stroll with Kore-eda stopping to take photos of the vivid purple flora which he posted to his Twitter profile.
“Juliette’s original pitch was a French person in Japan, but that was probably the last thing I want to do. What I really think will be valuable in this experience will be to go to France, shoot in French with a French staff.”
It wouldn’t be until 2015 before what eventually became The Truth , which is in cinemas from today, started to solidify.
The Truth, set in Paris, is the story of a famed French actor in the twilight of her career. The legendary Deneuve plays actor Fabienne, with Binoche portraying Fabienne’s daughter.
Kore-eda met Deneuve through the festival circuit, and while their first meetings were exchanging pleasantries like restaurant and sightseeing recommendations, it became clear to Kore-eda that they had developed a rapport that could lead to a collaboration.
“I’ve always wanted to work with Catherine Deneuve,” Kore-eda said. “If you’re going to go outside of your country and outside of your comfort zone and you’re going to do this thing, you should do it with the greatest people you can find.”
The idea for The Truth, though, predates Kore-eda meeting either Binoche or Deneuve. Kore-eda had previously written a version of The Truth as an unproduced play.
“Originally, when I had the play in 2003, the idea was that I would get a grand dame actress who could represent theatre and acting in Japan, and at the time, there was no one like who was still presently working.
“They’d all retired or were gone so I had kind of given up on that project back then.”
The success of a character like The Truth’s Fabienne is that it partly relies on an audience’s awareness of Deneuve’s personal career history, as a storied thespian with 70 years in the industry.
It’s a bit like Gloria Swanson’s Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard – to really carry it off, the intricacies and implied familiarity of fame, you need to cast someone who could bring that with them, not just portray it on-screen.
To that end, Kore-eda wrote some of Deneuve’s own history into the character, like how she almost worked with Alfred Hitchcock, or spot the references layered into The Truth, like that to Denueve’s 1967 classic Belle de Jour.
Fabienne is also Deneuve’s middle name.
“It was (Catherine’s) idea to call her Fabienne,” Kore-eda said. “So for her to say, ‘why don’t we use my middle name’, it sort of contradicts her stance that ‘this is nothing like me, this character is not me!’”
The French language and the culture was a challenge for Kore-eda who chose to work with an entirely French crew on The Truth.
“In France, they shoot for only eight hours a day and they don’t shoot on weekends. I went into it understanding those were the ground rules but once I got into it, it just felt like it was way too short (a day) and it took me a while to adjust to that reality.
“There are differences between working in the French language with culturally French people, it’s very different to the Japanese, such as the way they would articulate themselves and present how they feel so openly.”
But the differences offered a valuable experience for the Japanese director.
“If you’ve been making films for 25 years, it becomes rare that you do something for the first time. So even though every day is different and you’re shooting different things, it’s actually rare to do something so radically different you haven’t done before in the context of film.
“And once you do, it’s like a shot in the arm. That part of it is very good.”
Kore-eda is open to shooting another film in France, or even in the United States, and the opportunities have really opened up since that Cannes victory.
“There are a number of really interesting projects, including a number of films I really want to do in Japan, but I’m consciously putting my brakes on until I can recharge my energy.
“Five movies in five years – I’ve been going pretty hard, but I’ve turned the engine off for now.”
The Truth is in cinemas now
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Originally published as The Truth’s Hirokazu Kore-eda on working in France with Catherine Deneuve