Japanese director tries hand at filming in France
Major international filmmakers have often found artistic stimulation in working outside their home countries.
In 1966, at the height of the vogue for art-house cinema, French-born director Francois Truffaut and Italianborn director Michelangelo Antonioni each made classic movies in England: “Fahrenheit 451” and “Blow-up,” respectively. More recently, Taiwanese director Ang Lee and Mexican director
Alejandro G. Inarritu both won widespread acclaim for movies they made in America, including Lee’s “The Ice Storm” (1997) and Inarritu’s Oscar-winning “Birdman” (2014).
Hirokazu Kore-eda, a native of Tokyo, is the latest director to discover the joys and challenges of calling “action” and “cut” far from home.
Though Kore-eda’s previous films, among them the acclaimed “Like Father, Like Son” (2013) and “Shoplifters” (2018), were made in Japan, “The Truth” — which will be shown Saturday,
Sunday and Monday at the Gateway Film Center — is strictly a French affair: The film not only was shot in France, but it also features at its center a pair of Parisian screen icons: Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche.
“Film is a cultural form of expression where it’s easy to cross national borders and cultural borders,” Kore-eda said through a translator in a phone interview with The Dispatch in early March, the month before “The Truth” originally
was scheduled to play at the Gateway Film Center.
The opening was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic, but Gateway chose the movie to be among the first titles to play after it reopened on Monday.
In the French-language film with English subtitles, Deneuve stars as Fabienne, a somewhat over-the-hill movie star who recently has churned out a memoir with a questionable basis in fact. Paying a visit to Fabienne is her daughter, Lumir (Binoche), joined by her husband (Ethan Hawke) and daughter. Dramatic and comic developments follow.
Kore-eda credits Binoche with instigating the project. About a decade ago, the actress contacted the director expressing her enthusiasm for his film “Nobody Knows” (2004), leading to a shared meal of sushi in Paris.
“Ever since that first sushi meeting in Paris, we would periodically see each other in Tokyo or in Paris and continue to talk about a possibility of a project, but nothing at that stage moved forward,” said Kore-eda, 58, who eventually produced the outline for “The Truth.”
Much of the attention surrounding the movie, however, focuses not on Binoche but on Deneuve — a certifiable legend for her work in a host of important films, including Jacques Demy’s “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” (1964), Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion” (1965) and Luis Bunuel’s “Belle de Jour”
(1967).
“The whole story is about a grande dame of an incredibly intimidating actress in her later years,” Kore-eda said. “Honestly, it could only have really been played by Catherine Deneuve.”
In reality, though, the director found the actress pretty easy to get along with.
“I had heard people talk about how she’s self-involved,” he said. “But, once we went into production, she has a very, very clear sense of what her role is in the context of the larger film and the story.”
A bigger adjustment came in Koreeda getting used to the French film industry’s working hours.
“In the French system, they only can shoot eight hours a day,” he said. “Given the really long hours they work in Japan, without days off, it took me awhile to get accustomed to the fact that we had to quit, when in Japan, we would’ve kept on filming.”
Kore-eda himself intends to keep on filming — no matter where in the world that might take him.
“I am developing (films) that take place in Japan, possibly in the future a film that takes place in the U.S.,” Koreeda said.
He added: “My biggest discovery in making a film in France was realizing just how Japanese I really am.”
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