Chris Knipp
04-18-2025, 12:31 PM
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CATHERINE DENEUVE, DENIS PODALYDÈS IN THE PRESIDENT'S WIFE (BERNADETTE)
THE PRESIDENT'S WIFE (Léa Domenach 2023)
Hard to figure where this comedy of Jacques Chirac's wife is going
THe Conquest (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1791) (Xavier Durringer 2011) I reviewed in Paris. That was a political drama about the French presidency, specifically Sarcozy's dramatic seizure of power. We are in similar territory here, except that this is a depiction of the 1995-2007 French President Jacques Chirac and his wife Bernadette (Bernadette is the French title) as the drama of a squabbbling husband and wife, who are often jockeying for power, which Chirac has, but then seems to lose to his wife, who becomes a media darling, and for a while his popularity plummets.
The film, part comedy, part feminist manifesto, part arch political drama, becomes the portrait of a woman who emerges from the shadow of her illustrious husband to become a liberated force. Note that, as French viewers would well know, Bernadette is already active in local politics and comes from an older and more illustrious family than her husband. When he becomes President of France, he wants to make sure she doen't draw too much attention and so has assigned to her her own Director of Communications, Bernard Niquet (veteran Comédie Française actor Denis Podalydès, who played Sarkozy in The Conquest).
Niquet is supposed to tone Bernadette down, but when he sees how much political savvy and moxy she has, he turns into more of a campaign manager. Her predictions, against the polls, repeatedly turn out to be right. Rather than overshadowing her, Chirac's presidency provides a springboard for her, set off also by the regiional offices she's already held. Niquet, who at first was mocked as "Mickey," also grows in stature. Chirac, as played here by Michel Vuillermoz, is perpetually pouting and trying to squelch Bernadette. That is the running joke, which may become a bit worn: he perpetually trues to shush her, and she keeps gaining nationwide attention. The unkindest cut of all comes when he loses to Sarkozy and she comes on stage, in a glittering dress, to shake Sarkozy's hand when he takes over the presideency from her husband.
As the titular Bernadette, aka President's wife, Catherine Deneuve as usual glitters and glows, delivering her lines with dry aplomb. In an endless successon of public appearaces she wears apparently glamorous outfits that are criticized as being ringard or out of fashion, like her. Saint Laurant complains that they're from his past seasons. Karl Lagerfeld (Olivier Breitman) arrives to create one chic new outfit for her trimmed in brown fur. (Why not more?)
Bernadette uses canny methods to get her way, notably when Jacques won't fire his chauffeur Molinier whom she doesn't like. She gets the poor man drunk and the police take him away on one of her trips and she instead gets behind the wheel. She gains some sympathy when the Lady Di incident catches Jacques in delicto with an Italian actress, one such fling of many. Nothing here about the corruption scandals both Chriacs wound up in eventually. The elder daughter Laurence's anorexia and depresson are revealed, however.
While these are real people, a few, like the chauffeur, with names changed, and they played something like these roles, what heppens involves a good deal of comedic license. It's all good fun, though the fun (or titillation) will be greater if you have an incestuous familiarity with French politics, and also with recent French film or TV about those politics. Hervé Aubron of Cahiers du Cinéma, reviewing this film, disapproves of what he sees as its revealing "a trend towards emulsified biopics" that are "not deep but artisinal fakes" in which a public figure is played with "as a doll, unencumbered by biographical accuracy." Aubron compares this fllm unfavorably to the French Netflix series "Class Act" (also known as "Tapie") about a political figure that he calls "fairly convincing," and clearly prefers. We might too.
But, especially since Deneuve was coming back for this film after a three-year hiatus following a "health accident," one wants to give her a pass here. We may argue that the queenly Deneuve makes the grotesqueness of the political comedy intriguing even if it's at times a bit lame. But in another distinguished film magazine, Jean-Marc Lalanne of Les Inrockuptibles (https://www.lesinrocks.com/cinema/bernadette-est-elle-la-barbie-francaise-596146-03-10-2023/) indicts The President's Wife much more thoroughly. He says the director Léa Domenach attempts to "iconize" Madame Chirac into a French "Barbie," and that it is an unexpectedly "right-wing" film because it winds up mocking everyone but the decidedly conservative Madame Chirac, whom it makes "a prodigy of acuity, common sense and political acumen." It does indeed make her "an unheeded prophetess" and blindly accepts her "worst opportunistic manoeuvres (the rapprochement with Sarkozy)."
All this the anglophone viewer is little qualified to judge, but makes sense of the puzzlement one feels in watching Madame Chirac's successes unfold.
The President's Wife/Bernadette, 92 mins., debuted Sept. 17, 2023 at Toronto. It releases in the US Apr. 18, 2025. AlloCiné ratings press 3.4 (68%), public 3.5 (70%). Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-presidents-wife/)rating: 59%.
CATHERINE DENEUVE, DENIS PODALYDÈS IN THE PRESIDENT'S WIFE (BERNADETTE)
THE PRESIDENT'S WIFE (Léa Domenach 2023)
Hard to figure where this comedy of Jacques Chirac's wife is going
THe Conquest (https://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1791) (Xavier Durringer 2011) I reviewed in Paris. That was a political drama about the French presidency, specifically Sarcozy's dramatic seizure of power. We are in similar territory here, except that this is a depiction of the 1995-2007 French President Jacques Chirac and his wife Bernadette (Bernadette is the French title) as the drama of a squabbbling husband and wife, who are often jockeying for power, which Chirac has, but then seems to lose to his wife, who becomes a media darling, and for a while his popularity plummets.
The film, part comedy, part feminist manifesto, part arch political drama, becomes the portrait of a woman who emerges from the shadow of her illustrious husband to become a liberated force. Note that, as French viewers would well know, Bernadette is already active in local politics and comes from an older and more illustrious family than her husband. When he becomes President of France, he wants to make sure she doen't draw too much attention and so has assigned to her her own Director of Communications, Bernard Niquet (veteran Comédie Française actor Denis Podalydès, who played Sarkozy in The Conquest).
Niquet is supposed to tone Bernadette down, but when he sees how much political savvy and moxy she has, he turns into more of a campaign manager. Her predictions, against the polls, repeatedly turn out to be right. Rather than overshadowing her, Chirac's presidency provides a springboard for her, set off also by the regiional offices she's already held. Niquet, who at first was mocked as "Mickey," also grows in stature. Chirac, as played here by Michel Vuillermoz, is perpetually pouting and trying to squelch Bernadette. That is the running joke, which may become a bit worn: he perpetually trues to shush her, and she keeps gaining nationwide attention. The unkindest cut of all comes when he loses to Sarkozy and she comes on stage, in a glittering dress, to shake Sarkozy's hand when he takes over the presideency from her husband.
As the titular Bernadette, aka President's wife, Catherine Deneuve as usual glitters and glows, delivering her lines with dry aplomb. In an endless successon of public appearaces she wears apparently glamorous outfits that are criticized as being ringard or out of fashion, like her. Saint Laurant complains that they're from his past seasons. Karl Lagerfeld (Olivier Breitman) arrives to create one chic new outfit for her trimmed in brown fur. (Why not more?)
Bernadette uses canny methods to get her way, notably when Jacques won't fire his chauffeur Molinier whom she doesn't like. She gets the poor man drunk and the police take him away on one of her trips and she instead gets behind the wheel. She gains some sympathy when the Lady Di incident catches Jacques in delicto with an Italian actress, one such fling of many. Nothing here about the corruption scandals both Chriacs wound up in eventually. The elder daughter Laurence's anorexia and depresson are revealed, however.
While these are real people, a few, like the chauffeur, with names changed, and they played something like these roles, what heppens involves a good deal of comedic license. It's all good fun, though the fun (or titillation) will be greater if you have an incestuous familiarity with French politics, and also with recent French film or TV about those politics. Hervé Aubron of Cahiers du Cinéma, reviewing this film, disapproves of what he sees as its revealing "a trend towards emulsified biopics" that are "not deep but artisinal fakes" in which a public figure is played with "as a doll, unencumbered by biographical accuracy." Aubron compares this fllm unfavorably to the French Netflix series "Class Act" (also known as "Tapie") about a political figure that he calls "fairly convincing," and clearly prefers. We might too.
But, especially since Deneuve was coming back for this film after a three-year hiatus following a "health accident," one wants to give her a pass here. We may argue that the queenly Deneuve makes the grotesqueness of the political comedy intriguing even if it's at times a bit lame. But in another distinguished film magazine, Jean-Marc Lalanne of Les Inrockuptibles (https://www.lesinrocks.com/cinema/bernadette-est-elle-la-barbie-francaise-596146-03-10-2023/) indicts The President's Wife much more thoroughly. He says the director Léa Domenach attempts to "iconize" Madame Chirac into a French "Barbie," and that it is an unexpectedly "right-wing" film because it winds up mocking everyone but the decidedly conservative Madame Chirac, whom it makes "a prodigy of acuity, common sense and political acumen." It does indeed make her "an unheeded prophetess" and blindly accepts her "worst opportunistic manoeuvres (the rapprochement with Sarkozy)."
All this the anglophone viewer is little qualified to judge, but makes sense of the puzzlement one feels in watching Madame Chirac's successes unfold.
The President's Wife/Bernadette, 92 mins., debuted Sept. 17, 2023 at Toronto. It releases in the US Apr. 18, 2025. AlloCiné ratings press 3.4 (68%), public 3.5 (70%). Metacritic (https://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-presidents-wife/)rating: 59%.