When “The President’s Wife,” writer-director Léa Domnach’s feature debut, was released in France in 2023, it was called “Bernadette.” The title change for American audiences makes sense, as few would know the Bernadette in the original title. Turns out she’s the wife of former French president Jacques Chirac (Michel Vuillermoz). Madame Chirac is played by an actor who needs no introduction, the legendary Catherine Deneuve.
Few actors give better face than La Deneuve. She works wonders with merely a glance, a glare, or a contented smile. See “Belle du Jour,” “Repulsion,” or, if you’re in the mood for a more recent example, Hirokazu Kore-eda‘s 2019 dramedy, “The Truth.” In that film, La Deneuve plays a famous actress whose memoir causes a rift between her and her daughter.
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Bernadette Chirac also writes a memoir that gets her in trouble with her daughter, Laurence (Maud Wyler), but I’m getting ahead of the story here. “The President’s Wife” does two things differently than most biopics. Rather than showing us photos of the real Bernadette and Jacques Chirac at the end of the film, it frontloads them in the opening credits.
And instead of beginning with the familiar “based on a true story” credit, Domnach gifts us with an onscreen choir who tells us immediately that we should not accept everything we see as truth. The choir shows up several more times, acting as a musical Greek chorus of sorts when they’re not singing the “Hallelujah” chorus or “Habanera” from Bizet’s opera “Carmen.”
You don’t need to know French history to enjoy “The President’s Wife,” but it would come in handy. Chirac was president of France from 1995 to 2007. The film begins in May 1995 just before Chirac wins the election. Bernadette is seen confessing to a priest that her intuition predicts her husband’s victory. That intuition will become a major plot device, proving more accurate than President Chirac’s entire cabinet of political advisers.
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After helping her husband win the election, Bernadette believes that she will have a prominent position in the Elysée Palace as a reward. However, her verbal candor is seen as a detriment rather than an asset to her new position.
“You’re first lady now, you can’t always think out loud,” her daughter Claude (Sara Giraudeau) tells her after Bernadette is too brutally honest with the media about a Cabinet member’s personality. Claude has been her father’s most trusted adviser for a long time; she favors protecting his image over dealing with familial ties and conflicts.
Jacques would rather his wife be a silent ally while doing the charity appearances that are part of the first lady’s job. He has so little respect for her that she’s not allowed to stand on the balcony with him in celebration of his win. Plus, he cheats on her in a very public scandal.
Bernadette soon grows tired of the disrespect she’s endured. Using the late Princess Diana as a model, she reinvents herself as a popular woman of the people. She collects money for children and even opens a hospital for teenagers who suffer from anorexia, the same disorder that affected her other daughter, Laurence. When Bernadette reveals that detail in her memoir after promising she would not, it drives a rift between mother and daughter.
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That memoir is just one of the successful plans Bernadette hatches with Bernard (Denis Podalydès), the communications adviser Claude hired to teach her mother how to speak to the press. Though antagonistic at first, Bernard becomes a resourceful partner in crime. Watching Podalydès and Deneuve trade knowing glances as their plans succeed is a highlight. Her scenes with Laurent Stocker, who plays Chirac’s successor, Nicolas Sarkozy, are also quite entertaining.
Now in her seventh decade of starring in movies, Deneuve continues to glow onscreen. There’s such beautiful mischief in her eyes, and she’s at her most delectably dangerous when she’s not saying anything at all. These services are employed in a fun comedy that bends the truth until it nearly breaks. In that regard, “The President’s Wife” follows the advice of Deneuve’s character in “The Truth”:
“I never tell the naked truth. It’s not interesting.”
★★★
THE PRESIDENT’S WIFE
Written and directed by Léa Domnach. Starring Catherine Deneuve, Michel Vuillermoz, Sara Giraudeau, Denis Podalydès, Maud Wyler, Laurent Stocker. At Landmark Kendall Square. 93 minutes. Unrated.
Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.