Having once been the face of Chanel No.5, muse of Yves Saint Laurent and partner of photographer DavidBailey, Catherine Deneuve remains one of the most stylish women in the world,
and she was, perhaps, at her most stylish when she starred in Indochine RegisWargnier’s 1992 epic about the French colonial period in Vietnam.
I saw Indochine long before I ever saw Vietnam, and it indelibly coloured my vision of
that country. And I still see myself in a vauguely Deneuve-ish light, swanning
about in the Vietnamese heat in some gorgeous Vietnam-inspired couture.
When we finally did
get to Vietnam in 1994 the shadow of Catherine Deneuve still loomed,
particularly in Hanoi. She must have been quite the shopper, because shop after
shop in the Old Quarter featured a blown-up picture of the proprietor standing
next to a gorgeously humble Miss Deneuve, her hair pulled back from her
beautifully sculpted face.
Now in late middle
age, Deneuve’s name remains the very byword for a certain kind of old-world
Gallic glamour that has almost totally disappeared. She is the last of the
great French film stars.
And she’s back and
going strong in a new French romantic comedy called Beloved. She was also just
awarded the Stanislavsky Prize for a lifetime’s acting – well deserved.
Oh yes!
ReplyDeleteIndochine! That poster of Deneuve in the turban staring out over the balcony. It was everywhere and soooooooooo redolent of L'Asie Exotique. http://www.impawards.com/1992/posters/indochine_ver1.jpg
That movie along with Greene's The Quiet American began to clumsily fill in the gaps in my knowledge that were opened up by the coverage of the war during my childhood