As she studies a printout containing titles of the more than 70 movies in which she has appeared since 1956, Catherine Deneuve appears both perplexed and amused.
It’s not that the iconic actress and model has noticed a missing credit in the surprisingly long document. No, if anything, the filmography seems to her to be a bit too generous, including, as it does, small parts in television “episodes” and pictures she considers something less than noteworthy.
After those minor roles have been eliminated, though, with the scratch of a borrowed pen and a distinctly Gallic “tsk, tsk,” even Deneuve can’t help but agree that the list–which includes the names of many celebrated movies and directors–represents a substantial body of work. It becomes even more impressive when one considers that, in this country, at least, this great patrician beauty is known mostly for her ability to sell cosmetics, perfume and automobiles.
“Even if I’m not shooting, I’m always working,” said the 53-year-old native-born Parisian. “If I have to present films, I travel. If I’m doing publicity or photos, for me that’s working.
“I don’t do it for fun.”
Holding court today on the palm-shrouded terrace of her bungalow on the lush grounds of the Sunset Marquis hotel–a haunt for rock stars and supermodels, just a stone’s throw from the Strip–Deneuve is in Los Angeles to promote her new film, “Les Voleurs (Thieves).” As in the 1993 family drama, “Ma Saison Preferee,” she again is working with actor Daniel Auteuil and director Andre Techine.
In the sexy pyschological thriller, Deneuve plays a philosophy professor who becomes romantically involved with a suicidal young street urchin and car thief. Auteuil’s tightly wound character–a police detective whose father and brother are part of the Lyons mob–also falls for the enigmatic Juliette (Laurence Cote), causing a strange bond to develop between the rivals for the girl’s attentions.
Techine elicits an edgy and courageous performance from an actress whose resume also includes electrifying work in Luis Bunuel’s “Belle De Jour” and “Tristana,” Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion” and Francois Truffaut’s “The Mississippi Mermaid” and “The Last Metro.”
Her Marie may be an alluring beauty, but the part is hardly glamorous. It exposes Deneuve in the kind of physical and emotional ways an American actress of similar stature wouldn’t consider tackling.
“I was anxious to play a love story with a woman,” she explained, taking a thin cigarette from a package in her faux leopard-skin Prado bag. “I didn’t know what it would be like. Finally, it was like falling in love with a young man.
“I was told that it would be difficult for an actress here to portray a lesbian in a film. I find that sad.”
As Marie, she added, “I’m not in love with women, I’m in love with that woman.”
The relationship between Auteuil’s Alex and Cote’s tomboyish Juliette is driven by hit-and-run sex and the natural tension between a cop and criminal.
“He has had a very tense and tough life, and that was the only kind of relations he could have with a woman,” Deneuve said. “The girl was in between the two extremes. The man was using her for sex, while Marie was loving her and trying to understand her,” and the violent world in which she exists.
The opportunity to work again with Auteuil and Techine–who also directed her in “Hotel Des Ameriques” and “Scene of the Crime”–was what drew Deneuve to “Les Voleurs.”
“We wanted to do another film together, not even knowing what the script was going to be,” she said, sipping from a frothy cappuccino. “Our first collaboration was a very interesting film about the relations between brothers and sisters, children and parents. I like working with Daniel, but he’s also very nice as a person.”
Auteuil–handsome in the rugged, world-weary sort of way favored by French filmmakers–next will be seen in “Le Huitieme Jour (The Eighth Day),” which took last year’s Cannes Film Festival by storm. In the bittersweet story, he plays the reluctant companion to an irrepressible young man who seeks an independent life after walking away from a facility for people coping with Down’s syndrome.
No stranger to Cannes herself, Deneuve won the 1964 festival’s Palme d’Or for her breakthrough performance in Jacques’ Demy’s “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.” She also has served on a festival jury there, a duty she isn’t likely to repeat any time soon because, “It’s terrible to make a decision between very good films and actors. All competition is unfair.”
She much prefers “presenting” films she thinks are deserving of wider recognition and might benefit from her personal endorsement. As such, she says she was especially pleased last year when Demy’s charming musical was restored and given an encore release.
“Until I met Jacques and did `Umbrellas,’ I didn’t know this was going to be my career,” said the daughter of two actors, who first appeared in films at 16. “It wasn’t an accident but I wasn’t sure I would go on being an actress.
“I was pleased because it was a very special film, with beautiful music. It was so strange, so different. I love it. They’re also restoring Demy’s `The Young Girls of Rochefort’ ” (which also featured her late sister, Francoise Dorleac).
Deneuve also was on hand to present the refurbished version of Bunuel’s 1967 masterpiece “Belle de Jour”–a movie she still finds “disturbing”–at a recent New York Film Festival.
“To see a film like that 25 years later, was quite something,” she said. “It was a very challenging experience.”
Deneuve’s face is ubiquitous in France. In addition to her presence in films and magazines, her profile is used to represent “Marianne,” the French national symbol, on statuettes throughout the republic.
It’s as if Lauren Bacall’s image suddenly appeared on a newly polished Statue of Liberty.
Still, with only a few Hollywood films to her credit–“The April Fools,” “Hustle,” “The Hunger”–she is chiefly known internationally for the aura of class she brings to advertisements and fashion. Her lone Academy Award nomination came in 1993 for her performance as a wealthy colonial landowner in “Indochine.”
Professionally, she sees many differences in how actors ply their craft in Europe and America.
“Here, people express their feelings very much on their faces,” explained Deneuve, whose enigmatic countenance as been described in terms ranging from icy to radiant. “Maybe it has something to do with the language. The American people are very extroverted.”
European filmmakers, she argued, aren’t as afraid as their Hollywood counterparts to admit that people mature much past puberty.
“Here, there’s such a terrible anxiety about getting old,” said Deneuve, who has a son and actress daughter by director Roger Vadim and actor Marcello Mastroianni. “The same thing applies for screenwriters and directors. In Europe, like Africa, it’s the other way around, older people are considered to have the wisdom, the knowledge and intelligence.”
Is it difficult to be beautiful, as well?
“People want good-looking men and women to be dumb, because they shouldn’t have everything,” she said, with a quiet laugh. “I think some beautiful women have a complex about also being intelligent. I had, but it’s gone with time.”
In “The Convent,” an artsy film written and directed by Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira, she portrays the wife of a Shakespearian scholar played by John Malkovich.
She found the Steppenwolf almunus to be “a very interesting person and intelligent actor,” but she was fascinated by the idiosyncratic 86-year-old De Oliveira, who “doesn’t want to move the camera anymore. He used to do very, very long moving shots, but now he doesn’t want the focus of the shot to move ever.” (The film just was released on video by Fox Lorber.)
Despite her longevity in a demanding profession, Deveuve refuses to see herself as a “movie star.”
“It’s because not all the films I do are box-office movies,” she said. “I think people choose to see a film for a combination of reasons. I’m sure there are actors that audiences will go to see no matter what. But that’s happening less and less.”
These days, Deneuve has the freedom to be much more selective about the projects she agrees to do.
“I’m choosy . . . I look for a good script,” she said. “In Europe, the directors write the scripts and the best directors are also the authors of their films. They are much more aware about a film is all about.
“If I do less films, it’s because I think people see so many things on television anyway during the year. For an actor to be away from film is very difficult for the audience, but it creates a desire to see them.”
