Some time ago, in these pages, I had mentioned that several contemporary world cinema auteurs would be venturing away from their native film industries. One of them is Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda ( Shoplifters ) who made his French and English language with La Vérité or The Truth . The film opened in Venice last year and then travelled the global festival circuit including San Sebastian, Toronto, Busan, Mumbai and Zurich, and then some theatrical playdates. It made its home video début in early July this year.
The Truth features a galaxy of acting talent including Juliette Binoche, Ethan Hawke and the doyenne of French cinema Catherine Deneuve. Hawke, a struggling television actor coping with alcoholism is married to New York-based scenarist Binoche. Her mother, Deneuve, is an actress, a grand diva who is definitely not past her prime, and aware of it. Binoche and Hawke visit her on the occasion of the publication of her memoirs, titled La Vérité or The Truth . However, as Binoche finds out, the book contains anything but the truth, with glaring errors of omission and commission, including about her own childhood. And the stage is set for a series of face-offs between the mother and daughter. The film is a chamber piece, a typical French talkathon, if you will, but imbued with the gentleness that is Kore-eda’s style. To see Deneuve and Binoche pitted against each other is any cineaste’s dream and they don’t disappoint.
Which leads us to the pleasing topic of indelible mother-daughter combinations in cinema. To state the obvious, if there is a better film on the relationship than Ingmar Bergman’s masterpiece Autumn Sonata (1979), starring Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullmann, I am yet to watch it. The film has been analysed threadbare by scholars, and homages to it have sprung up over the years across various film cultures, including in India. Amongst recent works, Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird (2017) is an exploration of the nuances within a mother-daughter relationship and earned both Saoirse Ronan, playing the daughter, and Laurie Metcalf, as the mother, Oscar nominations.
James L. Brooks’ Terms of Endearment (1983) would walk into any discussion of this sub-genre, and rightly so, powered as it is by performances from Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger and the peerless Jack Nicholson and Danny DeVito. Mother-daughter relationships can often be fraught and two films that capture this to the point of causing active discomfort are set on the edges of the entertainment industry. Mike Nichols’ Postcards from the Edge (1990), based on Carrie Fisher’s semi-autobiographical novel has Meryl Streep as a recovering substance abuser forced to move back in with her mother (MacLaine), while Frank Perry’s Mommie Dearest (1981), based on Christina Crawford’s book, features an imperious turn by Faye Dunaway as abusive mother Joan Crawford. On a humorous note, Mark Waters’ Freaky Friday (2003) has Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as mother and daughter who, when forced to switch bodies, find out truths about each other. In Mitsuhito Shiraha’s What’s For Dinner, Mom? (2016), based on actress Tae Hitoto’s memoir, Haruka Kinami finds her mother Michiko Kawai’s recipe book and travels to Taiwan to discover her roots, culinary and otherwise. Eat beforehand.
Naman Ramachandran is a journalist and author of Rajinikanth: The Definitive Biography , and tweets @namanrs
