During her remarkable career spanning more than 60 years, Catherine Deneuve, who celebrated her 80th birthday in October, played very few characters who actually existed. Certainly, the imperial actress has played some crowned heads on the big and small screen, such as Anne of Austria in D’Artagnan (2001), by Peter Hyams, Marie Bonaparte in Princess Marie (2004), by Benoît Jacquot, and Catherine II of Russia in God Loves Caviar (2012), by Yannis Smaragdis. However, biographical films, very little for her, thank you!
“No, pfff! “, exclaims on the phone the one who dons Bernadette Chirac’s Chanel suits in Léa Domenach’s first feature film. “I agreed to play it because it was a comedy, it wasn’t a biopic in the fullest sense. It’s still something very different and that’s what I liked. A lot of what I liked about it, of course, is that it’s a revenge story. If it had just been done seriously to really tell the story of his life, it wouldn’t have interested me. »
In this playful and offbeat satire that is Bernadette, Catherine Deneuve shows great ease in the comic register. To see her delight in each barb she throws at her partners on screen, we regret that she has not played more often in comedies. “Because there aren’t enough of them,” she says.
Bernadette Chirac, born Chodron de Courcel, entered the Élysée in 1995 when her husband, Jacques Chirac (Michel Vuillermoz), succeeded François Mitterrand. The first lady of France barely has time to savor the victory of the new President of the Republic when their daughter Claude (Sara Giraudeau) makes her understand that she will have to be discreet. However, with the complicity of Bernard Niquet (Denis Podalydès), her chief of staff, she will become the darling of the French people.
A left-wing woman who campaigned for the right to abortion, going so far as to sign the “343 Sluts Manifesto” in 1971, and for the abolition of the death penalty in the 1980s, Catherine Deneuve, who in 1985 , lent her features to Marianne, symbol of the French Republic, did not know the wife of the leader of the Rally for the Republic (RPR), a right-wing party claiming the political ideas of General de Gaulle.
“I met her two or three times, but I never had lunch or dinner with her,” she explains.
Not having wanted to delve into archive research and interviews before filming, Catherine Deneuve reveals that it was by reading Conversation (Plon, 2001), where Bernadette Chirac confides in the journalist Patrick de Carolis, that she learned the most about her character, who said in 2015 that her union with Jacques Chirac “was not just a marriage of love, but a marriage of ambition.”
“No, it wasn’t more than a love marriage! believes the actress. Why do you say that? Oh no, no! She was very much in love with her husband, and frankly, it shouldn’t have been that easy for her. I think she had ambition for him, but not for herself. She also experienced things that I imagine were hard and difficult with her daughter and her husband, so at times, I think her character became much more closed off. »
In fact, at the request of her daughter Claude, her father’s advisor from 1989 to 2007, Bernadette Chirac, considered out of date with her pastel outfits and embarrassing with her outspokenness, had to change her image and take care of her language. “According to her daughter, she was doing things that were too direct, so there she was, she made him change, because in politics you always have to be diplomatic. »
Showing no resemblance to Bernadette Chirac, Catherine Deneuve did not seek to imitate the former first lady. At first surly and cantankerous, her Bernadette subsequently turns out to be almost endearing, even touching.
“It was the director’s choice,” says the actress humbly. I didn’t really have an idea about her before playing her. What I’m left with is what was developed in the project, the things she had done that I read in the book, so I didn’t approach her much more than that. »
