The Private Diaries of Catherine Deneuve: Close Up and Personal

Catherine Deneuve is one of the all-time leading stars of the French (and even European) movie industry. This book was published in France in 2005 (under the title "A L'Ombre de Moi-Meme") and now finally gets a proper release in the US. In "The Private Diaries of Catherine Deneuve: Close Up and Personal", Deneuve shares with us the diaries she kept while shooting 6 movies (Dancer in the Dark; East-West; Nightwind; Indochine; Tristana; and The April Fools). It is not clear on what basis these particular movies were chosen as presumably Deneuve kept a diary during many of her other movies. The observations from Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark (in which Deneuve plays a supporting role and singer Bjork plays the main character) make for compelling reading. Towards the end of the troubled shoot, Deneuve writes "I'm pretty discouraged, I don't care anymore. Bjork turns up around 11, which isn't unusual, but without a word of explanation or apology to me or anyone, not a single word. There's no point in expecting logical behavior from her; you have to accept her for what she is, wild and unique". Wow! Many other diary entries are much more mundaine, take this one from the "Indochine" set: "Back to studio to try on the Indo-Chinese outfit I would like to wear in the pagoda scene where I go to make offerings after Camille disappears." But a bit later Deneuve writes "I packed my trunk with bread, biscuits, honey and special long-life yoghurts from the French Institute for Agronomy Research. Even the rats like them--one evening in my room, I heard and then saw them carefully cutting through the metal lids--but I like rodents". Say what?Deneuve served on the Cannes Jury in 1994 (with Clint Eastwood as President of the Jury), and shares her diary entries from that experience, but unfortunately nothing from the jury's deliberations. In all, this is quite enjoyable if you're a movie buff and have seen most of these movies. Unfortunately, the diaries run only to page 120. What follows is a 50 page interview with Pascal Bonitzer, which is pretty insightful (Deneuve revealing she started writing movie set diaries to deal with the boredom on the set) but the interview is really not why I got this book for, give us more of Deneuve's diaries! Also included is a detailed filmography of Deneuve.