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Star power

But what’s here reminds us why Deneuve is one of the few true examples of star power left to us. It would be easy to think of her as the icy glamor queen of the Chanel ads — yet, like Paul Newman, she has in her later work has shown a willingness to dig deep in the roles that have come to her. European cinema, it’s true, doesn’t discard its female stars once they hit 30. Still, she seems to have precious little vanity — for one thing, she hasn’t disfigued herself with plastic surgery. But the key to her still-stunning beauty seems very much her comfort with herself. Seen in the last few years in pictures like Arnaud Desplechin’s Rois et reine|Kings and Queen and Téchiné’s Les temps qui changent|Changing Times, she offers us the pleasure of familiarity. And something much deeper: an example of the grace and confidence that the stars who grow before us can achieve.