The Beauty of Retrospect, July Actress Edition: Catherine Deneuve

And how can I not include Catherine Deneuve, still France's greatest film star (and still my all-time favorite actress) after all these years, in this month-long retrospective?

Exquisite, no? :-D

The first picture is from 1966, and the picture immediately above is from 1982, but since we're in the twenty-teens now, why don't I concentrate in her film work in this decade?

One of her more recent movies is the 2014 film In the Name of My Daughter, a harrowing real-life tale of a young Frenchwoman, Agnès Le Roux, who became estranged from her mother Renée, the owner of a casino on the French Riviera, and ultimately disappeared; Renée (played by Mlle. Deneuve) had Agnès' disappearance investigated, leading to the trail and conviction of Agnès' husband for her murder.  She also starred in Three Hearts, about a pair of sisters who fall in love with the same man at different times, the man not knowing their relation at first.  Mlle. Deneuve played the mother of the two sisters (and her real-life daughter Chiara Mastroianni, an earlier honoree on this blog, played one of the sisters).

Many of Mlle Denevue's films in the 2010s have been comedies,  such as  Potiche, a 2010 comedy about a woman who takes over her husband's umbrella factory (not located in Cherbourg), and what are now called "dramedies,"such as 2013's On My Way, about a restaurateur who faces bankruptcy and one day just decides to drive off and go on an adventure across France.  (It won her Coup de Cœur award at the Cabourg Film Festival in France.)  In her most recent comedy, 2017's Bonne Pomme (Good Apple), she plays an innkeeper smitten with a man who's run away from everything to open an auto repair shop.  Both Potiche and Bonne Pomme co-star Gerard Depardieu; Deneuve and Depardieu are the Hepburn and Tracy of modern French cinema.  

Still thought of as a perfume model in Middle America, Catherine Deneuve (above, in a more recent picture) made headlines in the United States earlier in 2018, but not for a new movie or even a new perfume; she criticized the Me Too movement for criminalizing innocent male flirting.  The criticism she received hasn't slowed down her career, though; approaching 75 years of age this October, she has two movies in post-production at this writing.

This is my first post to honor Catherine Deneuve on this blog since November 2016.