The subject of “The Truth,” a film directed by Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, is perfectly suited to this exercise. They are mother and daughter, one a French cinema icon but an imperfect mother, the other a screenwriter living in the United States.
They reunite in Paris when Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve) publishes an autobiography in which she takes many liberties with the truth. This irritates her daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche), who arrives at her mother’s Parisian home before the book’s release to try to understand a mother who has always eluded her.
From this complicated, painful relationship, Kore-eda crafts a bittersweet comedy, offering a reflection on the life of an actress, caught between the quest for truth in acting and the escape from an overbearing reality.
