Catherine Deneuve is the reigning queen of the Croisette

Tag: Power Fitting

Others may vie for the title but Catherine Deneuve remains the undisputed queen of Cannes. Ever since The Umbrellas of Cherbourg won the Grand Prix at the festival in 1964 and turned her into an international star, it’s been her festival. A few years back, when she tripped on the red-carpeted steps at the Palais, it almost caused a diplomatic incident. “They were too short and too high, so they had to redesign them,” she sniffs, when we meet at a beach-side restaurant looking out on an overcast Riviera.

This year (like last) she arrives at Cannes with two films, including one of the most talked-about of the festival, Arnaud Desplechin’s A Christmas Tale. And if anyone doubts the allure she stills holds for her nation, billboards all down the Croisette advertise her as the cover star for two glossy French magazines this month. Beat that, Angelina.

The only surprising thing is that Cannes has yet to erect a statue to her. After all, back in 1985, she was chosen by France as the model for its “Marianne” – the Spirit of Revolution. Her face adorned stamps and busts of her head were seen in town halls up and down the country.

Today, wearing cream trousers, a silk blouse with oriental swirls and blue peep-toe stilettos, Deneuve carries it all off with effortless poise.

Even though she’s now 64, it’s not hard to see why François Truffaut once remarked that a filmgoer finds his happiness simply by looking at her. As publicists flutter around her like fawning servants, it’s also clear that she’s used to being treated like royalty, not that she demands it. “Being a queen is always being on a pedestal,” she says, peering at me from behind some particularly stylish shades. “The first thing people want to do when you’re up is to put you down. I would rather stay working; I don’t like that image. I’ve never liked it and I’ve always tried to say it’s really not my thing.”

The latest phase in her hard-working career finds her reunited with Desplechin, with whom she worked on the 2004 film Kings and Queen. “I like his work very much,” she says. A Christmas Tale is an involving, complex story of a dysfunction-al family, in which she plays the matriarch, Junon, who discovers that she has leukaemia and opts for a dangerous bone marrow transplant. Such is the power of her performance that it would be more than fitting if she walked away with the Best Actress prize this weekend for the first time in her career.