Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on November 2010

Fans of European film had cause for excitement when Catherine Deneuve, the doyenne of French cinema, visited Tokyo for the second time this year. The 67-year-old actress participated in the Femmes@Tokyo symposium in February, but she was back again last month to attend the 23rd Tokyo International Film Festival, where she unveiled her latest film, Potiche (lit. “trophy wife”). In her second collaboration with director François Ozon, set in France in 1977, Deneuve plays a rich housewife who is content with her hobbies of jogging and composing little poems. That all changes when her highly strung husband (Fabrice Luchini) clashes with striking workers at his umbrella factory and suffers a heart attack that leaves him incapacitated for three months. She steps in to fill his shoes, and is surprised to find that she excels at business—so much so that, when he returns and reverts to his old ways, she goes over his head by running for public office. Another icon of French cinema, Gérard Depardieu, plays a communist politician who acts as her advisor. Deneuve previously worked with Ozon on the musical movie 8 Women (2002). “Eight years have passed, and he has grown as a director and I have changed as an actress,” she said during the festival. “Our working relationship is also closer. For example, I suggested I wear curlers and a hairnet during my jogging scene, in order to look less glamorous. François would probably be afraid to ask me to do that.” Potiche opens in Tokyo around New Year, when it will be released with the title Shiawase no amagasa (“umbrellas of happiness”), a play on Deneuve’s breakthrough film, Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964).