CATHERINE DENEUVE, global cinema goddess turning 70 on October 22

Many amazing movies on here, but I'm tempted to vote for Dancer to piss people off... But nah, too many more deserving films.

Ditto.

Probably going to have to be one of these tho:

1964 Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg)
1965 Repulsion
1967 Belle de jour
1983 The Hunger
2008 Un Conte de Noel (A Christmas Tale)

Great, now I'll have "Nous sommes deux soeurs jumelles. Nées sous le signe des gémeaux," stuck in my head all day.

She was really good in 'Le Temps retrouvé', too, but I have a particular weakness for 'Indochine'.

very underappreciated: her films with Andre Techine

Oh, are we voting for best film, or best performance by Deneuve?

Oddly enough, the song I've had stuck in my head all day even before this poll popped up is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pUR_s0m6vI

Just rewatched... it's so funny how that and the main theme from Umbrellas got 'adapted' into English (ie, not translated, given new cornball lyrics) and were big hits for Tony Bennett etc.

I'd put Les Voleurs and Ma saison préférée up with any others.

also I just saw Donkey Skin for the second time and the "love cake" scene, well, damn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HysasPjF84

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRrl_4kcz-Z6O8GoakpvGz0_-osh8Fv6mEz9R1rxvQJj0C3NPrsGRfoDcMQ8w

I can't think of her without getting morbid about her sister's death.

given new cornball lyrics

Let someone start believing in something else.

Morbs, have you ever seen 'Mayerling'?

I have not, nor the '30s Hollywood version.

Tristana may be my favorite Bunuel.

I love in Umbrellas when at the start of the pregnancy confession scene, her mom says "you look pale" and CD says "Merci."

kinda funny that her two A-list Hollywood leading men were Jack Lemmon and Burt Reynolds.

tough to choose between umbrellas and demoiselles.
hustle is a decent late aldrich movie, the first time i saw cd.

I have not, nor the '30s Hollywood version.

Watch it with the sound off. There's proof, if proof were needed, that Gardner, though a great beauty, was no actress but CD and Sharif are luminous.

I've only seen one of these (Repulsion) so I should abstain.

I've seen about half; my biggest blind spots are probably The Hunger, Indochine, 8 Women.

I liked Indochine precisely because it downplayed her usual Ice Goddess schtick. 8 Femmes was forgettable.

Seen 4, abstaining. To be unambiguous though: Tristana is ten times the movie Belle De Jour is. Other two are hammy Repulsion and forgot-she-was-in-it Un Flic, which was very good if more memorable for Delon. But then he's possibly even more beautiful, if we must reduce to such things

man, she's practically somnolent in Un Flic, but it works.

I've only seen maybe three or four of these, so I won't vote. (Would go for Repulsion, not surprisingly.) Young Girls, though not my kind of film, was actually pretty good. Saw Belle de Jour when I was 17 or 18; hoped to see lots of nudity ("Bar-ton Fink! Bar-ton Fink!" in Simpsons-speak), didn't, didn't like it, never looked at it again.

Love Donkey Skin so much, cake scene in particular. Could have gone for any one of about eight but I think it has to be Repulsion.

15-year-old me channel surfing late at night says "the hunger"

Let someone start believing in something else.

You've gotta admit they're pretty sappy next to "Of course I can get you a tidy sum for your necklace, madame."

her jugs are incredible in the following movies: Le Sauvage, Liza, Pola X, The Hunger, Mississippi Mermaid. unfortunately Dr. Morbius left off Le Sauvage

this is tough because i've seen none of these

le sauvage, c'est vous

xp

i'd never heard of it (or Liza), h4a, so this poster persuaded me to leave it off.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1f/LeSauvage.jpg

She's been terrific the last ten years, much more an actress than a figure orvessel.

it's already been nine years since Changing Times!

this fave of her Actress Period (closer to 20 years, I'd say) has some sapphic stuff, if that's what interests you cavemen.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41BVDR523PL._SY300_.jpg

Where's Potiche? I know you hate it but

http://i.imgur.com/KUXufgy.gif
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41BVDR523PL._SY300_.jpg

yeah, Potiche had to go. That Dangerous Liaisons miniseries is on DVD here, v curious.

Not necessarily her best performances or the greatest film, but my favorite is Genealogies of a Crime, and she's terrific in it, so...

the best:

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Belle de Jour
Time Regained
My Favorite Season
Un Conte de Noel

I don't rate Tristana as a Buñuel or Denueve movie; she's miscast, I thought when I saw it again last year.

yeah i saw Tristana in the rerelease this year and, i dunno. it didn't do a lot for me. though her gams sure did *makes a bunch of sound effects like the police academy guy*

lots of good recs on this thread, thanks all.

you sound more like Bob Hope on a USO tour tbh

xp

Belle Dr Jour is the only Bunuel I dislike, just far too bleak in tone to carry the illusion - it has the Pan's Labyrinth realism/surrealism disconnect problem. His other late movies are sublime, this is stodgy.

I used to think it was a problem that without glancing at the italicized subtitles I couldn't distinguish dream from reality; now I think that's the point.

He does do it better on Discreet Charm.

^I agree with that but it's hardly a mark against BdJ imo

She's miscast or misdirected in Girl on the Train; she's diffident and distracted. Her responses aren’t consonant with the actions onscreen.

one of my fav actresses ever -- need to see more of these beyond the obvious ones though (umbrellas, repulsion, belle).

There's a matter of factness about her screen appearances in recent years that is itself part of her talent; she knows she's beautiful and she's like "Quelle barbe!"

belle de jour is bleak?

It's not about whether dreams can be distinguished from reality (the less the better, frankly) - it's that the film doesn't seem to know whether to be sadistic or kind to its characters, with the result a lack of integration between masterful light surrealist touch and an uncharacteristic failure of sympathy that is the bane of much 'realist' cinema xps

Ass, I've seen it twice and felt slightly violated & saddened both times

I don't know whether to be sadistic or kind to life's characters

Wouldn't feel right voting without having yet seen Belle de Jour (which neither iTunes nor either of the local library systems here carry).

happy birfday Reine Catherine

http://www.fandor.com/blog/daily-deneuve-70

that interview done by Desplechin is def worth a look...

"I remember meeting a journalist in Los Angeles, when Téchiné’s Thieves [96] came out, who said to me 'You don’t know how lucky you actresses are in Europe. An American actress could never agree to play a lesbian in a film, after a certain age and at a certain point in her life or career. It’s too risky.' I admit that I have always zigzagged. You know, it really depends on what films are being offered to you. It’s not always that interesting. Maybe people are more accepting of my choices, whereas for somebody else they would say, 'How strange that she did that'” The door that opened to me after Belle de Jour was such that a lot of things could pass through it. Belle de Jour is a film that got bigger with time. It did well when it was released, but only later did it become a mythical, almost cult film. And that character became something of a symbol, a strange heroine. And because I played her, people made assumptions about me."

"I confess that I prefer Tristana…"

"I definitely prefer Tristana to Belle de Jour!"

http://www.filmcomment.com/article/catherine-deneuve-interviewed-by-arnaud-desplechin

kinda funny that her two A-list Hollywood leading men were Jack Lemmon and Burt Reynolds

The one with Lemmon I find kind of irritating, but the one with Reynolds, Hustle is bittersweet and unjustly overlooked, it seems.

I only saw it once, probably in the '80s, but I think it gets auteurist attention via Aldrich.

somehow i never came across this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m30O27UBRiM

I really like her album.

Tristana -- wooden leg or no wooden leg -- can't top Belle de Jour.

who needs a wooden leg when you've got a wooden performance

Belle de Jour is waaaaaay Bunuel's most overhyped movie. which isn't to say it's not great but it's not even his 3rd best 60s film. it's rep lies mostly in relative accessibility plus relatively wide distribution. also it wd be bullshit to think of it as Deneuve's best film performance since the point is to play it flat

and now having read back i still mean what i say but my point isn't that Belle is flawed

Well, it's a film performance, but I'm not sure it's acting (like her Repulsion work). She's acted better elsewhere.

I love BDJ because the brothel scenes are lived-in (the madam's acting is one of the few examples of which in a Bunuel film you can separate from the thesis). It's not Simon of the Desert, but it's better than Diary of a Chambermaid and Viridiana.

first bit is what i'm getting at - her performance is functional, but that's totally what's called for

second bit is more difficult, i like Bunuel when he's being deceptive and BdJ isn't as deceptive as [i]Chambermaid[i/], at least.

Sure its flat, but I like the space Bunuel gives to D, and her how her flatness dominates the screen anyway.

Bunuel seems is surely hostile to acting, so more point-missing..

well, she might prefer her work in Tristana (Buñuel does too) because she was used to his methods and "gave" him "no trouble," according to one of those interviews with the Mexican critics.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Hello Alfred, I don't understand how CD is miscast in BDJ and how it's not even a Buñuel movie.

I'm only familiar with the Buñuels / von Trier / one Ruiz, and my favorite is Généalogies d'un crime.

he said that about Tristana.

... except "I don't rate it as" means it's not a good one, not that he doesn't consider it one. Britishism annoyingly adopted by American musos.

kiss my arse

you should have done

Sorry about that. Tristana makes better sense, but I liked the whole thing so much I didn't mind.

75! Has two films in postproduction, by Techine and Cédric Kahn, and preparing to shoot a Kore-eda film with Juliette Binoche and Ethan Hawke.