A French tale that is lacking panache

THIS picture was due for release in Curzon cinemas — which, like almost all others, have now closed — but it can still be viewed from today on the videoon-demand streaming service, Curzon Home Cinema.

I saw it at last year’s Venice Film Festival, where it had the honour of being the festival’s curtain-raiser.

It was a strange choice, actually. Venice usually opens with a Hollywood allsinging or all-action whopper such as La La Land or Gravity. The Truth is a playful French-language melodrama (with occasional bursts of English) which somehow adds up to less than the sum of its parts.

Those parts are pretty impressive, though. Catherine Deneuve plays Fabienne, a grand old French actress, but also a vain, bitchy, selfabsorbed diva, who depicts herself in her forthcoming autobiography as a selflessly attentive mother.

Her long-suffering screenwriter daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche), who is married to a second-rate American TV actor (Ethan Hawke), knows otherwise.

Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Koreeda delivers some priceless moments. There’s one that raised a huge laugh in Venice, when Fabienne is musing that more than a few great actresses have initials of the same letter: Simone Signoret, Greta Garbo. When someone then ventures Brigitte Bardot, she gives a hilariously disdainful little Gallic shrug.

The Truth is worth seeing for that cherishable moment alone. But as a whole the film doesn’t quite deliver on all its abundant promise.