“That’s an unbelievable movie,” he remembers thinking. “I’m gonna make it one day.” In his 20s, Vallelonga, an actor and occasional screenwriter, interviewed his father and Shirley ...

Long the woman-behind-the-man, Bernadette Chirac (Catherine Deneuve) arrives at the presidential Elysée Palace in 1995 frustrated and all but cast off by her newly elected husband, Jacques (Michel ...