On May 7, 1995, following the second round of votes, Jacques Chirac was elected President of the French Republic. This, as predicted by Bernadette Chirac, his wife, who is herself an elected representative. However, the latter notes, disappointed, that her husband, eager for light and women, has no use for her advice. In the shadows, the “wife of”! Humiliated repeatedly, Bernadette Chirac one day had enough. The president doesn’t care about the first lady’s infallible political flair? Very good: she will use it to her own advantage. To the great dismay of the gentleman, here is the lady who has become an essential political and public figure. In political-biographical satire BernadetteCatherine Deneuve amuses and enjoys herself in equal measures.
The film was directed and co-written by Léa Domenach. His parents are the journalists Michèle Fitoussi and Nicolas Domenach. The second is in this case a specialist in Jacques Chirac, whose biography he co-wrote in three volumes. It is therefore possible to assume that Léa Domenach must have known the subject thoroughly well before taking inspiration from it for a film. But in fact, it is interesting to note that the said subject is not Jacques Chirac, but Bernadette Chirac.
Set from the victory of 1995 to the defeat of 2007, the film, which announces itself from the outset as a fiction while sticking very closely to the facts as they were abundantly documented, thus offers the portrait of a a woman not who emancipates herself, but who reinvents herself. In that the protagonist remains a product of her time and her rank: as she herself declares at one point, she wants to preserve her “old France side”.
However, she does not intend to make an appearance at the Élysée, as her husband (Michel Vuillermoz) and his advisors, including their daughter Claude (Sara Giraudeau), would like.
In this regard, if Léa Domenach shines a resolutely flattering light on her heroine, she nonetheless exposes the character’s gray areas. We think, for example, of a major breaking of a promise to his other daughter, Laurence (Maud Wyler).
Of laughter and accuracy
With a lively rhythm, the film oscillates between observation of morals, matrimonial farce and, it goes without saying, political satire. We do not force the note in any of the registers.
When directing, however, Léa Domenach sometimes seems indecisive. There are passages, like the prologue where a choir summarizes the life of the protagonist, or like the nightclub trip, which take a more fanciful, even kitsch, approach. Which approach is reminiscent of that of François Ozon in Potichewhere Catherine Deneuve plays a parent character against a similar thematic background.
Most of the time, however, the director favors a direction that is certainly effective, but quite self-effacing (in contrast with the heroine). The resulting dissonant effect is not happy.
And then, whether you are keen on French politics or not, the developments are hardly surprising. Except that the laughter is there. Above all, the observations are correct. Finally, at the risk of insisting, there is Catherine Deneuve, royal through and through. Sorry: presidential.