Don't let the largely French cast and setting fool you - The Truth is very much a Hirokazu Kore-eda film. In fact, it approaches the concept of family previously explored by Shoplifters (2018) but in a different way. Placing the movie in the milieu of the French movie industry (complete with loving easter eggs to French cinema) only furthers this exploration - what are actors but conmen, trying to make you believe that falsehood is reality? In that sense, the characters of The Truth are a family of conmen trying to convince themselves that they are not a family, even though, in their own dysfunctional way, they actually are.
The venerable Catherine Deneuve holds the film together; she is the star that holds the family in orbit, even though some members of that family would rather break free. She seems to be having a lot of fun with her role, though that may partly be because Deneuve is basically playing herself.
There's a film within a film in The Truth, a sci-fi flick that seems to mirror the family's situation, but Kore-eda wisely makes things ambiguous, leaving it to us to fill in the blanks. And that is perhaps the greatest strength of the film: offering the idea that within the structure of a family, the "truth" - whether historical or not - is often subjective, tempered by biases and hazy memories.
In interviews for her latest film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Celine Sciamma describes the role of the muse in art, in that usually she is usually depicted as a character that is beautiful just because she is there, i.e. an object or a prop. In this film, she subverts that notion, portraying the muse as an active collaborator in the creation of art. And this idea ties into the greater scheme of things - this is a film about women creating beauty, a film about women in love, and a film about women being seen.
It's remarkable how meaningful Sciamma makes the film, even though it is, at least superficially, conventionally structured. But the film is about gleaning meaning from art, and that applies to the film itself. The tragic myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is reinterpreted and deconstructed, in dialogue and in a painting later on. An innocuous painting turns out to be something much more - a declaration of undying love. Hidden behind innocent facades, art bears meaning to those who know where to look.
Sciamma still takes a restrained approach, filling the film with meaningful silences. She pays close attention to crafting her mise en scene, making every frame in itself a painting. And oshe molds these cinematic images to create a final scene that epitomizes the still-developing idea of the female gaze, in which the protagonist, the camera, and the audience become one, a moment indelibly etched in memory.
The venerable Catherine Deneuve holds the film together; she is the star that holds the family in orbit, even though some members of that family would rather break free. She seems to be having a lot of fun with her role, though that may partly be because Deneuve is basically playing herself.
There's a film within a film in The Truth, a sci-fi flick that seems to mirror the family's situation, but Kore-eda wisely makes things ambiguous, leaving it to us to fill in the blanks. And that is perhaps the greatest strength of the film: offering the idea that within the structure of a family, the "truth" - whether historical or not - is often subjective, tempered by biases and hazy memories.
It's remarkable how meaningful Sciamma makes the film, even though it is, at least superficially, conventionally structured. But the film is about gleaning meaning from art, and that applies to the film itself. The tragic myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is reinterpreted and deconstructed, in dialogue and in a painting later on. An innocuous painting turns out to be something much more - a declaration of undying love. Hidden behind innocent facades, art bears meaning to those who know where to look.
Sciamma still takes a restrained approach, filling the film with meaningful silences. She pays close attention to crafting her mise en scene, making every frame in itself a painting. And oshe molds these cinematic images to create a final scene that epitomizes the still-developing idea of the female gaze, in which the protagonist, the camera, and the audience become one, a moment indelibly etched in memory.
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