"Persepolis," the animated Cannes competition entry from France, has stirred awards talk here since the film's debut earlier this week. On Thursday, leading French actress Catherine Deneuve joined her daughter Chiara Mastroianni and the film's writer/directors Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud at the Carlton Beach restaurant on Thursday for a Sony Pictures Classics lunch. Deneuve, who voiced a character for the animated, French-language adaptation of Satrapi's succesful books, will also perform the role in English for an alternative version of the film. Asked about recent talk in Cannes this year about the apparent "death of cinema," while sipping a glass of wine and smoking a cigarette, Deneuve was straightforward on the matter. "I've heard that for such a long time," she said of the death of cinema, "It's a very slow death...since the end of the New Wave..." Concluding the thought, she added, "It is still very alive, I think."