Tag: Catherine Deneuve

Deneuve as a first lady out to reinvent herself

Catherine Deneuve stars as the title character in The President’s Wife, a fictionalized biopic of French first lady Bernadette Chirac. (Photo courtesy of Cohen Media Group)

By Richard Ades

What’s it like to be the wife of a leader who forces you to live in his shadow and ignores your political advice? The President’s Wife answers that question with its feminism-informed biography of former French first lady Bernadette Chirac.

But don’t expect a sober-minded piece of historical revisionism. The film, directed and co-written by Lea Domenach, refuses to take itself too seriously, and it’s clear from the first scene that we shouldn’t, either.

As Bernadette (the legendary Catherine Deneuve) makes her way to a confessional booth for a heart-to-heart with her priest, the church choir informs us that what we’re about to see is based only loosely on reality. In fact, the singers warn us, it’s a “work of fiction.” 

Still, it’s hard not to hope that what follows is least partly true, because it’s a delicious story of self-reinvention and political comeuppance.

We first meet Bernadette in 1995, when her husband, Jacques Chirac (Michel Vuillermoz), is on the verge of winning the presidency. A politician in her own right, Bernadette has worked hard to bring about this long-sought victory, but once the new administration takes office, she’s quickly pushed to the background.

With her dated wardrobe and occasionally loose lips, Bernadette is seen as a liability by both her husband and her younger daughter, Claude (Clara Giraudeau), who works as one of his chief aides. The two even go so far as to assign a communications adviser named Bernard (Denis Podalydes) to help Bernadette hone her image. The idea is to keep the first lady from embarrassing and upstaging the president.

However, the plan soon backfires.

After a series of events provide proof of (1) Bernadette’s political smarts and (2) Jacques’s marital unfaithfulness, Bernard switches his allegiance from the husband to the wife. Together, Bernard and Bernadette begin working to improve her image through such tacks as promoting charities, rubbing elbows with celebrities and, mostly, just being herself.

To put it mildly, their efforts prove fruitful for Bernadette and entertaining for the audience. (Watch for the trained bear!)

Anyone who’s less than fully knowledgeable about French politics might lose a reference here and there, but it’s just a slight inconvenience. Thanks to Domenach’s witty script and playful direction—and thanks to a great cast and especially to Deneuve’s droll and assured performance as Bernadette—The President’s Wife is one history class you won’t want to skip.

Rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

The President’s Wife opened April 18 in major cities and will expand to other markets beginning April 25. It is scheduled to open May 9 at Columbus’s Gateway Film Center.

My mom, the cinematic legend

The Truth
Movie star Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve, center) is visited by daughter Lumir (Juliette Binoche) and son-in-law Hank (Ethan Hawke) in The Truth.

By Richard Ades

The Truth is a startling change of pace for Japanese writer/director Hirokazu Koreeda (2018’s Shoplifters), being a French film with two very French leading ladies. In a different sense, though, it’s not startling at all.

Though the plot hinges on the prickly relationship between aging movie star Fabienne Dangeville (Catherine Deneuve) and her screenwriter/daughter, Lumir (Juliette Binoche), the implicit subject is the world of movies. And moviemakers love to make movies about moviemaking, as Quentin Tarantino did just last year with Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.

The Truth takes its title from Fabienne’s new memoir, whose upcoming debut has prompted a visit from New York-based Lumir and her actor/husband, Hank (Ethan Hawke), and young daughter, Charlotte (Clementine Grenier). But the book hardly lives up to its name, Lumir finds, as it describes a warm mother-daughter relationship that never actually existed. Asked about this, Fabienne huffily replies that, being an actor, she feels no obligation to be shackled by reality.

We soon learn that Fabienne actually feels little obligation to anything but her craft. She routinely ignores or insults those around her, including her past and current lovers (played by Christian Crahay, Alain Libolt and Roger Van Hool). Frankly, she’s a monster, as she proved long ago during an incident that still haunts Lumir and may even haunt Fabienne herself.

Even so, most people let Fabienne get away with such behavior because she’s a living legend. And so do we, the viewers, if only because she’s played by a beloved living legend.

The-Truth-2-1
Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve) and Lumir (Juliette Binoche) share a rare moment of mother-daughter ease.

As Fabienne, Deneuve is as cool and self-possessed as ever, though not quite as enigmatic as she was in some of her classic roles. The script isn’t subtle about the fact that she behaves the way she does because nothing matters to her except acting.

That makes it hard to get involved in the mother-daughter relationship that’s at the center of the film. It’s clear that Lumir wishes Fabienne had been as warm a mother to her as she is to her own daughter. But it’s also clear that, for Fabienne, duty to her daughter and others will always be outranked by her duty to cinema.

One gets the feeling that, for writer/director Koreeda, that’s as it should be. Maybe that’s why, despite being a handsome work with a great cast, The Truth is likely to appeal more to hardcore cinephiles than to the general public.

Rating: 3 stars (out of 5)

The Truth (PG) is available from VOD outlets beginning July 3.