The Conquest is very entertaining. It has a great performance by Denis Podalydès (he nails his character, Nicolas Sarkozy, the current president of France), the dialogue is rich, quick, and often funny, and the score is appropriately weird (here, a hint of the heroic; there, a dash of the carnival). But there happens to be a great film within this fine film. The fine film concerns the rise of Sarkozy (between 2004 and 2007), but the great film concerns the fall of Bernadette Chirac (Michèle Moretti) and Jacques Chirac (Bernard Le Coq).

Let's leave The Conquest for a moment and consider The Iron Lady, a film about another famous political figure—Margaret Thatcher. Part of what made Meryl Streep's portrayal of Thatcher so memorable is the fact that Thatcher herself was such a character. Streep's is a performance of a performance. Now back to The Conquest (a film, by the way, that has the same comic mode as Primary Colors). Podalydès's portrayal is superb, but Sarkozy is really not that much of a character in real life. He is not as nuts as Thatcher. Bernadette Chirac and Jacques Chirac, on the other hand, are wonderfully nuts (Madame Chirac with her big glasses, Monsieur Chirac with his foul mouth: "Don't split pubic hairs"), which is why every time they appear in The Conquest—and Madame Chirac does not appear enough—the Sarkozy story immediately leaves the stage altogether. The movie you wholly want to watch concerns the Chiracs dealing with that ambitious "dwarf." Varsity Theatre, Fri–Tues.