Catherine Deneuve: “Being an actress is not the main thing for me”
© Sylvie Castioni/H&K
We meet Deneuve at the Excelsior Hotel during the Venice Festival. The day before it had premiered, and today even those journalists who moderately liked the first French film by the Japanese Hirokazu Kore-eda found an opportunity to praise Deneuve’s work - the best in many years. In “Pravda” she is truly funny, lively, ironizing her own image of an icy star and partly the very idea of stardom. Her heroine Fabienne spends her entire life tormenting those who work for her and those who love her: colleagues, aspiring directors, husbands, and only daughter (Juliette Binoche). It tortures, as charismatics and narcissists often do, alternating abuse with charges of charm, so that the nightmare does not dissipate for years, and Fabienne’s power over the victims does not weaken. Deneuve swears that, despite a lot of cinephile jokes that refer to her own filmography and biography (in particular, her relationship with her deceased sister, actress Françoise Dorleac), this is not all about her. But when she suddenly fixes her gaze on a young employee who asks if he should turn on the air conditioning, and he almost falls into a trance, you realize that some of Fabienne’s qualities are not so alien to her. “I’m not like this heroine and I don’t feel the same way about movies and people,” Deneuve insists. “Maybe if I hadn’t kept in touch with my family, who would never have allowed me to be like this, things would have been different.” There is a scene in Pravda where Fabienne suddenly seems capable of genuine feelings towards her frustrated daughter, and the next moment she coolly collects these feelings into her acting piggy bank: she will probably come in handy later on the set. "That's horrible! Even rehearsing this scene was scary for me. For one second she became a living person, and then - once! - and plays again. This is a nightmare for me. Of course, I also use my own emotions in my work, but I do it unconsciously. If it's part of you, then it's not immoral. When I leave the set, I return to my normal life in the evening, I don’t take my roles with me.”
Deneuve's ordinary life today consists of two films a year (she tries not to agree to more), walking the dog, gardening, meeting with family and friends and... visiting agricultural exhibitions. “People there are so passionate about different animals that they don’t really look at other visitors, they just look at the animals for themselves. In general, in Paris I calmly walk everywhere with friends or alone, go to the market, to the cinema. Well, there are probably some places where it’s better for me not to appear. For example, I can't go to the beach in the south of France in mid-August. Although I don’t really like the beach, to be honest. But most of the time I do what I want and try not to get fixated on some things that are inaccessible to me. Being an actress is not the main thing for me, life is not about that.”
Not long ago, Deneuve apologized to victims of sexual violence who may have been offended by the letter she signed from “one hundred French women” - the so-called letter “in defense of harassment.” She decided not to comment publicly on this topic anymore. Deneuve became a star in the 20th century, when sexual harassment in the film industry was considered by many to be the norm. She can hardly imagine what this #MeToo thing is about. So the decision in her case is reasonable, but still betrays capitulation to a new era, which is not in everything clear and close to her. “Actually, I can say whatever I want. Well, almost... It was to be expected from social networks that your words could be taken out of context and turned inside out. So I decided that I wouldn’t say anything more about #MeToo - it’s all gone too far.” Does she have social networks? “No, what are you talking about! I don’t use social networks, I never look there, and I don’t even want to! I only know that there are some fake pages of mine. Strange, isn't it? To create a page for someone and publish something there... - Deneuve thinks about it. – Now it is difficult for me at work, because they treat me not as an actress, but as some kind of symbol. I’m trying my best not to turn into a monument.” Judging by her role in Pravda alone, Deneuve definitely succeeds in this, but she seems to have given up smoking? Previously, she never gave an interview without a cigarette. “Did you quit?!” No, what are you talking about! There’s just no ashtray here.”
