Deneuve charms as a president's wife

 

For me, The President's Wife, a movie about the wife of French president Jacques Chirac, has less to do with recent French history than with the presence of Catherine Deneuve. The movie belongs to Deneuve, who's now 81, and director Léa Domenach wisely lets her claim it. Together, Deneuve and Domenach tell the story of a woman who steps out from behind her husband's shadow to establish herself as a prominent figure in French political and social life. As portrayed by Michel Vuillermoz, Chirac -- a conservative who held the presidency from 1995 to 2007 -- doesn’t welcome his wife's attempts to chart her own course. Bernadette decides she’s deferred to her philandering husband long enough when his affair with an Italian actress generates embarrassing headlines. With help from her PR adviser (Denis Podalydès), Bernadette becomes recognizable and respected on her own. Sara Giraudeu plays Claude, the Chirac daughter who serves as one of her father's principal advisers. Maud Wylerportrays Laurence, the daughter who suffers from an eating disorder and largely is kept out of view -- until her mother decides to talk publicly about her problem.  As a female empowerment tale, The President’s Wife proves predictable, yet the tone remains light and Deneuve charms as a woman of wit, spine, and intelligence. An early title card warns against taking everything in the story as factual. I don't know enough about Bernadette Chirac to know where fact yields to fiction, but The President's Wife proved amusing enough to keep me from fretting too much about questions of pin-point accuracy.