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<\/p>\nAccording to the reliable IMDb, The President\u2019s Wife (released elsewhere as Bernadette) marks the 142nd screen appearance of the legendary Catherine Deneuve. Her career stretches back to the French New Wave of the 1960s, and includes some of the seminal films of Jacques Demy. She\u2019s appeared in films by Roman Polanski, Fran\u00e7ois Truffaut, Jean-Pierre Melville and Fran\u00e7ois Ozon among many others. Now she lends her immense talent to first-time feature director L\u00e9a Domenach.<\/p>\n
The result though is quite uneven. The story (by Domenach and Cl\u00e9mence Dargent) is ostensibly about the empowerment of women – and it scores on that front. But the plot soon runs out of steam and ends up basically repeating itself. The President of the title is Jacques Chirac, president of France from 1995 to 2007. Apparently, Domenach\u2019s father was a journalist who specialised in covering Chirac\u2019s tenure, so her pedigree for the project was clear. But the script lacks narrative drive, and the ending isn\u2019t particularly impactful.<\/p>\n
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The film opens around the time of Chirac\u2019s (Michel Vuillermoz) 1995 election to the presidency. His wife Bernadette (Deneuve) is clearly the brains of the operation and has been pulling her husband\u2019s strings during the election. But once in the Elysee Palace, Bernadette finds herself sidelined by political insiders and party operatives. She\u2019s relegated to largely ceremonial duties as \u201cfirst lady\u201d – and they\u2019re not even fun ceremonial duties. Her demotion is even more galling because her daughter Claude (Sara Giraudeau) has been appointed as Chirac\u2019s key aide. Surrounded by incompetent flunkies and hidebound by tradition, Bernadette soon finds herself a rather unpopular figure in an otherwise popular government. So she sets out to reinvent herself. With the help of adviser Bernard Niquet (Denis Podalyd\u00e8s) she ditches the dour outfits in favour of colourful dresses. Her blunt approach with the press softens and she becomes a media darling. And she\u2019s able to become more assertive in curbing her husband\u2019s philandering.<\/p>\n
Despite a lyrical disclaimer at the beginning that the film is fiction, it\u2019s clearly based in fact. Where the fact stops and the fiction starts is up to the audience to work out. Domenach went back through the official archives to find images to accurately reflect the times and places of the film. And it looks great, thanks in no small part to Elin Kirschfink\u2019s crisp cinematography and some lovely production design from Jean-Marc Tran Tan Ba.<\/p>\n
The film hits a lot of the same beats as Fran\u00e7ois Ozon\u2019s Potiche (2010) – which also starred Deneuve – so the idea isn\u2019t exactly fresh. And despite its technical excellence, the film seems to have no idea about where it can – or should – go. The result is a bit of a mish-mash that never really resonated with me.<\/p>\n