Review: In 'The Truth,' French film icons Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche pair up for a quietly stirring mother-daughter standoff

It’s a bit of a shock to learn that, before writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s “The Truth,” its stars — Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche, two icons of French film — have never done a movie together. It’s less shocking to see how natural a pairing they are, portraying opposite ends of a prickly mother-daughter relationship.

Deneuve plays Fabienne Dangeville, a famous French movie star whose diva tendencies are apparent in the first scene, when a nervous journalist is interviewing her on the occasion of her about-to-be-published memoir. The interview is cut short with the arrival of her daughter, Lumir (Binoche), a New York-based screenwriter, along with her husband, Hank (Ethan Hawke), a second-tier TV actor, and their 7-year-old daughter, Charlotte (Clémentine Grenier).

Lumir’s visit is partly a vacation, but also her first chance to read Fabienne’s memoir. When she does, Lumir isn’t happy about it. Lumir accuses her mother of fabricating parts of her life, like the story about the mother picking the daughter up from school — something Fabienne was always too busy to do. What’s worse, in Lumir’s mind, is that Fabienne has omitted any mention to her onetime friend and acting rival, Sarah, for reasons that are explained as the story progresses.

Also omitted from the book is Fabienne’s long-suffering assistant Luc (Alain Libolt), who quits his job in protest. This leaves Lumir to hold Fabienne’s hand on her new movie set, where she plays the oldest incarnation of a woman whose mother goes into space and never ages. (Kore-eda based the film-within-a-film on a short story by Ken Liu.) Fabienne’s regular insecurity while performing is compounded by the fact that the actress playing her ageless mother (played by newcomer Manon Clavel) reminds Fabienne and Lumir of Sarah.

Kore-eda, who directed the 2018 Palme D’Or winner “Shoplifters,” is writing and directing his first film outside his native Japan, but he doesn’t stray far from the small domestic dramas at which he excels. We learn, more by observation than exposition, that Jacques (Christian Crahay) is Fabienne’s current live-in boyfriend, and that Pierre (Roger Van Hool), her ex, sometimes drops by. We also learn that Lumir’s relationship with Hank is strained, again for reasons Kore-eda unfolds gradually.

Deneuve — who gave Fabienne her own middle name — seems to revel in playing off her persona as a legendary movie star, rolling her eyes at the mention of Brigitte Bardot and revealing the neuroses beneath the thespian facade. Binoche, whose screen persona has always been more raw and vulnerable than Deneuve’s, uses that difference to full advantage, portraying Lumir as the wounded daughter who had to go to America to get out from under her mother’s shadow. The combination is quietly intense, setting off small emotional explosions on the path toward a moving conclusion.

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‘The Truth’

★★★1/2

Available Friday, July 3, on the SLFS@Home virtual cinema and other rental platforms. Rated PG for thematic and suggestive elements, and for smoking and brief language. Running time: 107 minutes; mostly in French, with subtitles.