The Truth

2019 · Japan, France · 106 min

Director: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Screenplay: Hirokazu Kore-eda
Producer: Muriel Merlin
Music: Alexei Gennadjewitsch Aigi
Cinematography: Éric Gautier
Editing: Emmanuel Croset

What the critics say

87 % Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews

Cast

Roger Van Hool

Clémentine Grenier

What it is about

Fabienne Dangeville is one of France's most celebrated actresses. When her memoir is about to be launched, her daughter Lumir, a screenwriter based in New York, arrives in Paris with her husband Hank, an American actor, and their daughter Charlotte. Lumir is surprised to find the book already printed without her having read it, and the conversation quickly reopens old wounds: Fabienne's frequent absences during Lumir's childhood and the book's silence about Sarah Mondavan, a close friend and fine actress whom Fabienne once betrayed. Meanwhile, Fabienne shoots a science fiction film about a mother who travels into space to slow her aging, and her co-star Manon Lenoir, a rising young actress, is often compared to Sarah. The film explores family ties, memory, and how each character reshapes their own past.

How it was made

The Truth is Hirokazu Kore-eda's first film shot outside Japan and in a language other than his own. He wrote, directed and edited it, assembling a cast of leading French performers, with Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche at the centre, alongside Ethan Hawke, Ludivine Sagnier and Clémentine Grenier. Éric Gautier handled the cinematography, Alexei Aigui composed the music, and Muriel Merlin produced. Shooting in France gives the production a quiet parallel with its story, since the film-within-a-film, a tale of space travel and uneven time, mirrors the tensions within the family at its core. The result blends the observational comedy and intimate drama that mark the director's work.

Reception and legacy

The film had its world premiere at the 76th Venice International Film Festival on 28 August 2019. It was released in Japan in October that year and in France in December, through Le Pacte. Critics received it as a departure from the director's usual territory, praising its starry cast and its reflection on fame, vanity and motherhood. Within Kore-eda's career it stands as an excursion into European cinema that widens the scope of his enduring interest in family.