Catherine Deneuve: "I will never see myself like the others see me"

Catherine Deneuve awaits you in the felted bar of a hotel on the left bank where she has her habits, asks the rare tourists present - who pretend not to recognize her - if she can smoke.Who could say no to Catherine Deneuve?She lights her thin cigarettes one after the other, the scrolls of smoke nimmine her beautiful face of Deneuve, "a face that we cannot detach," said Truffaut.She speaks quickly, thinks quickly and sometimes does not bother to finish her sentences.Her eyes shine behind the smoked glasses, and his vitality of all times is delighted: Deneuve, who hates sacralization, has never been an evanescent.She would prefer to speak China and flea market - her devouring passions, with botany and cinema -, but the actress is there to evoke the farewell to the night (released on April 24, 2019), of André Téchiné her "film brother», With whom she turns for the eighth time, an exemplary collaboration started in 1981 with Hôtel des Ameriques.

Catherine Deneuve plays Muriel, she is brunette, carries rubber boots and a khaki parka: she heads an equestrian center in the provinces.When she discovers fortuitously that her grandson has radicalized and that he goes to join Daesh in Syria, her universe collapses.She is disarmed.How to hold it back?It is a dry film, all in tension, where a lot of emotions go through looks and silences.The actress, feverish and tender, is perfectly there in her place.

Woman and free actress, Catherine Deneuve continues to inspire the authors, wrapped by the all-terrain talent of this adventurer always ready to play with fire.Japanese Koreeda wrote the truth for her, with Juliette Binoche, that we may see in Cannes.Cédric Kahn turned it out in Family Festival, with Emmanuelle Bercot.Then it will be terrible Jungle, a first film, an adventure comedy shot in Reunion, where she will play Vincent Dedienne's mother.Interview.

Madame Figaro.- For this issue, Dominique ISSERMANN imagined you as a free woman, with emblematic attributes - cigarettes, car, motorcycle.Does it look like you? Catherine Deneuve. - We always need to add labels.There was the cold woman, then the fire under the ice and, today, a more tangible thing: freedom.It is true that over the years we abandon things on the way, we attach less importance to it, we lighten up.More precisely, anxieties change, we are worried differently.In fact, you have to familiarize yourself with many other things that occur over time.We must both fight reasonably and accommodate it.Even if age and image are not an obsession with me, we are still confronted every day...

On video, Catherine Deneuve by Dominique ISSERMANN: LES STOPS

As an actress, you have never been truly defined by your age, which allows you to chain interesting roles with agility...I even happened to refuse roles that were no longer for me.I said to myself: no, it's exaggerated, it will not be credible.I am very lucid: you must not hang on.And choose films in line with your age.Not to be taken short does not mean either that it is pleasant.

Est-ce choquant pour une actrice à la beauté exceptionnelle de jouer pour la première fois une mère, puis une grand-mère ?Avoir des enfants et des petits-enfants dans la vie fait vraiment relativiser.I was a mother early in life and in the cinema.I already had a girl in the umbrellas of Cherbourg.I also think of that happens only to the others, from Nadine Trintignant.Grandmother, that's something else.I have no problem with that, but the word summons images that are not necessarily happy...You know, my representation does not interest me much, and I will never see myself like the others see me.I do lots of other things when I don't turn, I am very active, very lively.There is the actress and then the woman, to which I do not give too much access.I have a taste for secret, and I have long decreed a security perimeter around me.It's in my nature.

You do not enter any listed box...I do not belong to a clearly defined family of actresses.I feel like I am separate, which does not mean "better than others."People never expect to find me where I am.They are surprised to see me queuing in the cinema or in my neighborhood, where everyone knows me.I have a neighborhood life, even if it's less well on weekends: I make detours, there are streets that I do not take to avoid tourists and selfies' requests, which I also go awaykindly that I can.

Farewell to the night is your eighth film with André Téchiné. Est-ce un rendez-vous important ?Oui, ces rencontres avec André Téchiné m’importent beaucoup.Together, we have a past, films, memories - for me, often strong and painful roles.Nothing is acquired.Each time, I wonder if I will live up to his expectations, if I will manage to satisfy it or surprise it.He's a filmmaker who spokes me.He is incredible.When he turns, there is only that.The intensity of his commitment is such that he is exhausted in the evening.

You say that he is your "cinema brother"...We are the same age, we have been turning together since 1981, it's crazy when I think about it.Things have done very naturally.We are close, we go to the cinema together, we dine together, I even sometimes see it on weekends.At the same time, there are areas that we never approach together.For example, that of sentimental life is something we don't talk about.

On video, Catherine Deneuve in 13 films

Comment préparez-vous un rôle ?Ça se fait beaucoup durant les lectures, mais aussi au moment où l’on prépare les costumes, qui, je le pense, construisent l’armature d’un personnage.Unconsciously, things are put in place, and we enter the role.I don't work alone, but with the director.I reread the scenario a lot, but I like to keep a freedom in relation to the text, the vagueness interests me.I just turned with Kore-Eda: it was impossible not to change the text at the last moment, because it was translated from Japanese.In addition -a rare luxury when you turn with film, as is its case -it sometimes let the camera turn beyond the catch: we had to adapt, Juliette Binoche, my partner, and me...

You play an actress there...Yes, a terrible, appalling, selfish, overwhelming actress - a real monster.I had a lot of fun, it's a composition role.Where do we see actresses like that?Joan Crawford and Bette Davis at the time, perhaps...And even...The anecdotes concerning them were undoubtedly mounted in pin.

Catherine Deneuve under the objective of Dominique ISSERMANN

Farewell to the night is a film with a very realistic social background. Que vous évoque le climat politique français actuel ?C’est un moment charnière, et je suis très attentive.I am afraid that what will come out of the great debate will not live up to expectations.There is a revolt that goes back far.What made the cut overflow is the carbon tax.On the part of the government, it is a ignorance of rural life: in the countryside, you need a car, and a car, it costs expensive.You know, the agricultural world touches me a lot, I am very attached to it.Do we know that there is almost one farmer per day suicide?France is rurality.We can't and we shouldn't let that die.

Que pensez-vous des actrices et des femmes qui se serrent les coudes au nom de la parité ?Évidemment, il faut qu’il y ait plus de femmes partout.But we don't have to go through violent claims.We must promulgate more laws to oblige parity to really exist.Here: legislate...

Avez-vous parfois souffert de l’absence de parité dans votre métier ?Non.I think I earned less money than Gérard Depardieu, but it's really not a problem...

Farewell to the night, by André Téchiné, with Catherine Deneuve, Kacey Mottet Klein, Oulaya Amamra.Released April 24, 2019.