Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda is riding high at the moment. His last film “Shoplifters” won the Palme d’Or at Cannes 2018 and this year, his latest feature, “The Truth,” will be making its world premiere as the opening night film of the upcoming Venice Film Festival. And it’s also his first English-language feature with stars. Kore-eda has, up until this point, exclusively made films in Japan with native actors. But “The Truth” stars Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke and legendary French icon Catherine Deneuve. Ludivine Sagnier (“The Swimming Pool”) co-stars, but this really sounds like it’s a showcase for mothers and daughters and Binoche and Deneuve.
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Another family drama, Kore-Eda’s bread, and butter, “The Truth” centers on a stormy reunion between a daughter (Binoche) and her actress mother, Catherine, (Deneuve) against the backdrop of Catherine’s latest role in a sci-fi picture as a mother who never grows old. Hawke plays Binoche’s husband.
Here’s an unofficial synopsis that’s on IMDB that hits upon some of the finer details of the film
Fabienne is a star; a star of French cinema. She reigns amongst men who love and admire her. When she publishes her memoirs, her daughter Lumir returns from New York to Paris with her husband and young child. The reunion between mother and daughter will quickly turn to confrontation: truths will be told, accounts settled, loves and resentments confessed.
So, despite all the meta cinema elements, “The Truth” definitely appears to be another family drama, but this time, the baggage that accumulates between parents and their adult children and the reckonings that occur once the dust of the past has been kicked up all over again.
“The Truth” makes its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival on August 28. Look for all our coverage from Venice beginning that day.