The term "star power" is thrown around a lot in our celebrity-obsessed age, but it's actually a rare quality. If you want to see some, get a load of Catherine Deneuve at 70.
In the new film by Emmanuelle Bercot (who made 2012's relentlessly grim child protection unit procedural Polisse), the divine Miss D plays Bettie, who owns a struggling bistro in rural Brittany. She's a long-time widow who lives with her carping mother, and her boyfriend has just ditched her for a newer model.
When a lunch service goes sour, she goes out the back door looking for a cigarette, but her parting "I'll be back" turns out to be an exaggeration. Her search morphs, with surprising plausibility, into a road trip, with a sharp detour at the mid-point when she gets an unexpected call from her estranged daughter (pop star Camille), and her 11-year-old grandson Charly (Schiffman) enters the equation.
The raw material seems like the stuff of cliche but the two actors, who generate real chemistry, make it special: the second half may verge on the formulaic but there's a real warmth to the characters.
Deneuve, who is in every scene and almost every shot, is at her best in the film's first half, which consists of a series of stand-alone episodes, some involving non-actors: a one-night stand; a confessional exchange with a security guard who shelters her from the rain; a scene in which an arthritic old farmer rolls her a longed-for cigarette.
