Still impossibly gorgeous and chic at age 65, Catherine Deneuve is the ultimate living emblem of the lasting romance of French film.  She’s also amongst the busiest international female stars over the age of fifty, and while Deneuve has made the occasional questionable move since hitting that marker of age (dueting with a post-post-post Sex Pistols Malcolm McLaren; playing “herself” in I Want to See, a dramatized document of her visit to war-torn Lebanon), Melissa Anderson is right to note that for the most part, over the last decade and a half, “she has shown a fearlessness in her roles—no matter how small.”

That fearlessness is on display in A Christmas Tale, where Deneuve is at her best rocking a borderline incestuously playful love-hate with her wicked charmer of a son (and potential lifesaver) Matthieu Amalric. With that film hitting theaters tomorrow, here’s a look back at a few iconic Catherine Deneuve moments, all readily available via YouTube.

“Chanson Des Jumelles,” from Les Demoiselles de Rochefort

Of the two Jacques Demy musicals in which Deneuve appeared in the 60s, I prefer the darker, more bittersweet Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, in which Deneuve’s mother encourages her to marry a rich diamond salesmen when her great love knocks her up then goes off to war. But this early number in Demy’s tribute to the Hollywood light musical comedy (featuring an aging Gene Kelly as the love interest for Deneuve’s sister, Françoise Dorléac) is a better advertisement for Demy’s charms. Dressed in matching tennis dresses and ridiculous Easter bonnets, Deneuve and Dorleac sing a jaunty tune full of back story, touching on everything from their single mom’s frites stand to the moles the sisters inherited from their absentee dad, while still reminding us every third line that they’re looking for husbands. But in a dreamy, adorable and not at all contemporary pathetic way!

Factory Dancing, Dancer in the Dark

Deneuve plays a more reluctant song-and-dance participant in this first big number from Lars Von Trier’s experimental musical tragedy. But it’s her initial resistance and arms-folded impatience with the potentially dangerous childlike fancies of almost-blind Selma (Bjork) that make the thing, when Deneuve finally surrenders.

Lipstick after murder before imaginary hallway grope, Repulsion

The bit where Deneuve dreams she’s attacked by hands reaching through the walls of her apartment is oft cited as the most memorable image of Roman Polanski’s stark 1965 thriller, but as the above clip shows, that moment is the punctuation on a string of visual ideas. My favorite is when the delusional Deneuve–in between killing her landlord when he tries to rape her, and falling to the hands in the hallway–rises from bed, applies a generous coat of lipstick, and then returns to bed, where another attack, this one imaginary, leaves lipstick streaks on her pillow.

A Lesbian Vampire’s Guide to Picking up Women, The Hunger

This clip from Tony Scott’s 1983 vampire movie isn’t embeddable, but it’s so good that we’re willing to lose you to the click through. The impossibly regal Deneuve pours her housegeust Susan Sarandon a glass of “2,000 year old sherry,” then sits at the piano and calmly plays while Sarandon essentially talks to herself for while. Eventually, there scene takes a turn for Graduate-esque “are you trying to seduce me?” territory, at which point accidentally Sarandon spills a bit of sherry on her white t-shirt, which she very obviously is wearing nothing underneath. Whoops!