The film anchors itself on May 6, 2007 - the day Sarkozy (played by Denis Podalydès, a reasonable facsimile) became France’s president with 53 percent of the vote - and flits back and forth through the five preceding years, when the right-wing politician was amassing power during his tenure in the cabinet of President Jacques Chirac (a bluff Bernard le Coq) while simultaneously losing his wife, Cécilia (Florence Pernel), to dissatisfaction and an extramarital affair.
The film’s chief flaw is its failure to illuminate what’s going on inside Mme. Sarkozy’s head and heart, but the impact of her abandonment on her husband is immediate and delicious. He doesn’t miss her so much as desperately need her by his side in public, and he frantically tries to woo her back even as he’s dallying with a hot blond journalist (Ellie Tardy). (Sarkozy’s subsequent marriage to actress-model-hyphenate Carla Bruni is, sadly, beyond the scope of this film’s time frame.)
“The Conquest’’ presents itself as “a work of fiction based on real people and events,’’ and it unfolds in government offices and over power lunches, the characters bluffing, threatening, compromising, and folding in their various bids for political turf. Other than Sarkozy and Chirac, the characters will be largely unfamiliar to US audiences, but a quick Google will fix that, and, besides, they’re all recognizable types, from Sarkozy’s chief rival, the outfoxed silver fox Dominique de Villepin (Samuel Labarthe) to the campaign team led by an unctuous Pierre Charon (Dominique Besnehard).
