While many political satires concern themselves with the forefront of administrations and movements, “The President’s Wife” platforms the woman on the sidelines of the mass of machismo at the vanguard. Jacques Chirac (played here by Michel Vuillermoz) was France’s president from 1995 to 2007, previously being the mayor of Paris. The film spans the years of his initial election through the end of his presidency, but does so through the eye of his wife, Bernadette (Catherine Deneuve).
Introduced and chaptered by a resounding choir, director Léa Domenach and co-writer Clémence Dargent immediately make it known that this biopic is not entirely accurate. If one were to Google “Bernadette Chirac nightclub,” we’d come to find that the prideful sequence of coquettish cozying with a boyband member is indeed a piece of fiction. It is likely fair to assume that confessional booth rendezvous with Sarkozy and plots for chauffeur drunkenness may also be stretched. One wonders though how much of the line is blurred when it comes to the snide goober “The President’s Wife” makes the nation’s leader out to be.
Of course, the film is from Bernadette’s perspective, who is hardened by routine disappointment from her husband: infidelity, deprecation, and inattention. Though the couple met as students earning their political science degrees, in a room of suited male devotees, Bernadette’s qualifications ring mute. Her daughters, Claude (Sara Giraudeau), her father’s ambitious advisor, and Laurence (Maud Wyler), who desires absence from the public eye, seem to represent the spectrum of what Chirac ultimately wants from his women: subservience or quiet.
Bernadette refuses both, but it’s both private and public favor she lacks: her 1970s Karl Lagerfeld threads present her as an antique, and her demeanor and sharp tongue classify her as austere by the masses. Here, “The President’s Wife” plays a hand at an old-school makeover, both in the winky whimsy of a new look and the whetted blade of Bernadette coming into her power with the help of her chief of staff, Bernard (Denis Podalydès). Using her political science background and clever wiles, the duo embark on a campaign of new beginnings.
At times playfully quaint and others sharply witty, the film maneuvers an environment of stuffy prestige and constant charading with deft hands. It relishes in the rich, grand spaces of the 1% whilst equally taking jabs at the same artifice shown in the charlatan nature of those who inhabit them. Deneuve is a riot, moving with surgical precision through humor and devastation, but always maintaining a stiff, very French upper lip of casual indifference. Though as we root for her to rise from beneath her husband’s foot, Domenach is not quick to let us forget that she is still a politician, willing to sacrifice others for her own mobility. At times these moments are dealt with a chuckle, and at others, they sing with sympathetic disappointment.
Bearing witness to Bernadette’s plot throughout the film gives recall to a very proto-Feminist directive of storytelling, but is enjoyable nonetheless due to the performances at hand. Vuillermoz is hilarious, moving with a goofy, lanky gait and an ever present schmaltzy, comedically dumbing smile. The lead duo have a vice grip on their personas and while Deneuve’s is more often the rigid spine to Vuillermoz’s cartoony sensibilities, there’s plenty of room for each to play around or keep it all buttoned up. They’re believable as figures rather than a watered down caricature, but Domenach makes clear her sentiments and priorities towards each. For non-French audiences (or those not well versed in world politics), many references and soundbytes can soar over the head, but “The President’s Wife” is most concerned with uplifting its lead lady in all her schemes, sarcasm, and competence, and this it does well.
