Seasoned serenity

The 65-year-old Deneuve -- for 40 years, France's most glamorous actress -- is more than usually serene in "A Christmas Tale." It's not that Junon has consciously rejected self-pity, it's that she's constitutionally philosophical. As she seductively nuzzles her rotund hubby while he's on the phone, it's easy to forget she's imperiled. Perhaps she's forgotten it too.

In one of the film's most revelatory scenes, Junon and Henri, visiting for the first time in six years, sit on a garden swing at night. He tells her he doesn't love her, and she reciprocates. But he has the upper hand in their "war," he says, because he's a compatible bone marrow donor.

"The first time you see it, it's quite funny," Deneuve says. "But then it quickly becomes disturbing. At the beginning, when you are told about the family and how the children grew up, you see it's going to be very different to what you're used to seeing and hearing -- which is, no matter what happens, you love your children. I think insulting each other is the way that Junon and Henri communicate, but it probably wasn't like that in the beginning. She says she doesn't love him, but she does. And he loves her."

Her fabled blond hair dyed brown for the film she's currently shooting, Deneuve was wearing a filmy, knee-length brown skirt, a knitted orange top and a sturdy chain around her neck on the day of the interview. Her beauty remains such that it doesn't make one nostalgic for the lovely young women she played in Jacques Demy's musicals "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964) and "The Young Girls of Rochefort" (1967), the housewife who dreams of becoming a whore in Luis Buñuel's "Belle de Jour" (1967) or the seduced schoolgirl who eventually prevails in Buñuel's "Tristana" (1970).