CATHERINE DENEUVE returns to the screen in The President’s Wife, portraying Bernadette Chirac—the outspoken, trailblazing, and politically astute partner of former French president, Jacques Chirac. ZACHARY WEISS speaks with an icon of international cinema.
For once, Catherine Deneuve is on a break. When she calls from Paris to catch up with Avenue, the sun is setting on a bright day in the city, and the silver screen legend is briefly en repose. It’s the eve of the César Awards—the French equivalent of the Oscars—where she presides over the 50th annual ceremony as president and will present the award for Best Film. In the coming weeks, her plans are strikingly less opulent: a visit to her garden at her country home. “When I can, I am a gardener,” she says. “I’m closer to the English in that way. I’ve been doing it for a very long time.”
Since her first roles in the 1960s, including The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, (the original inspiration for La La Land), Roman Polanski’’s Repulsion, and later, in the Oscar-nominated Indochine, Deneuve has ascended to the same mythical milieu of lauded French actresses as Brigitte Bardot and Isabelle Huppert. All told, since 1962 she has starred in a staggering 146 films, which surprises even the star herself. “Oh my God, really?” she exclaims. “I knew it was over a hundred, but not that many!”
Most recently, she stars in The President’s Wife, a politically satirical jewel of a debut from first-time director Léa Domenach, chronicling the swift rise of Bernadette Chirac, the formidable wife of French President Jacques Chirac. Deneuve portrays the First Lady of France as the subservient housewife-turned-cunning political operator, hellbent on taking on the old boys’ club that once ran the country.
“I am driven by curiosity and the desire to do something very original.”
“It’s a period that I knew quite well,” Deneuve recalls of the Chirac presidential terms, from 1995 to 2002 and 2002 to 2007. “But to prepare I looked up some archives, and I also read the book that Bernadette wrote in 2001, Conversation, which became very popular and very successful. It changed her relation to the country and to the people.”
The film offers barbs of comedic relief too, with playful portrayals of fellow First Lady Hilary Clinton, a young and ambitious Nicolas Sarkozy, and a pantomimic version of designer Karl Lagerfeld, whom Chirac accompanies to a Paris discotheque filled with half naked young men to convince the public she is, in fact, in touch with youth culture. In the scene, she sports a fur-trimmed denim jacket and blue jeans, a stark about-face from Bernadette Chirac’s Chanel tweed skirt suits.
As expected for Deneuve—a fashion icon and longtime Yves Saint Laurent muse—the film’s costuming becomes its own character, echoing her legacy on and off screen. “My husband at the time, [photographer] David Bailey, told me about Yves Saint Laurent when he was quite new, and I asked him to make me an evening dress to meet the Queen in London,” she reminisces. “I think I was maybe 25.” (The year was 1966, and she was, in fact, just 22 years old.)
Saint Laurent would go on to design much of Deneuve’s personal wardrobe, as well as the costuming for films including Belle de Jour (Luis Buñuel, 1967), La Chamade (Alain Cavalier, 1968), La Sirène du Mississipi (François Truffaut, 1969), Liza (Marco Ferreri, 1972) and The Hunger (Tony Scott, 1983). “This lasted for a very long time, and I was so fulfilled,” she says of their friendship and creative partnership.
“My husband at the time, David Bailey, told me about Yves Saint Laurent when he was quite new, and I asked him to make me an evening dress to meet the Queen in London. I think I was maybe 25.”
While her effortless style from this era lives on as a blueprint—just look to Instagram fan accounts like @Deneuveness and @Catherine_Deneuve_Magazines, a digital trove of her magazine covers—Deneuve herself places little value in looking back. Instead, she continues to create relentlessly, often choosing to collaborate with new directors that tell disruptive stories—stories that, like The President’s Wife, are grounded in real history. “For a first feature film, I feel truly lucky,” says director Léa Domenach. “From the beginning, we entered into a real working relationship, which quickly helped me get rid of my shyness and apprehensiveness. She is completely invested in the work. And if her presence on set demands high standards, through the respect that people have for her, it does not preclude joy. Her joy of being on a set, of trying new things, of always wanting to reinvent herself, is contagious.”
“The script is always the most important thing to me,” Deneuve explains. “[Working with new directors] is not really a risk. When I did the film with Polanski, nobody knew him at the time. They just gave me this script to do this film, so for me, I am driven by curiosity and the desire to do something very original. If the script is good, I think that’s enough to be a good film. After that, it can happen that the film is not really very popular because it’s so peculiar, but still, that makes it very important.”
The President’s Wife is playing at select theaters nationwide, coming June 24 to rent or buy on DVD and digital.
