...What kind of credentials will we need and is it even possible?
Having a French bank account makes a lot of things easier and/or cheaper, like paying rent, having a Euro debit card, and saving money on the exchange rate.
If you're going to be
living in France every year rather than being a tourist, I suspect it would be useful to have a French bank account. But, as Bev said, it depends on how much time you'll be here, whether you need a French bank account to make other things easier / cheaper, and how your US credit & debit cards add fees and use higher exchange rates for every purchase or withdrawal you make from an ATM.
When my wife and I bought our house in France 3 years ago, we were able to open a checking account with Barclays via telephone call and email exchange with a Barclays personal banker (Barclays is an English Bank that has an office in Paris). We needed a Euro account at a French bank so we could establish telephone, water, and electric accounts and pay the bills. If you send me a private mail, I'll be happy to provide our Barclays account manager's contact informatoin.
The docs / info that we had to send included scans of our passports, drivers licenses, marriage license, birth certificates, US bank statements, Annual Income & Assets, and US Utility Bills (for our US Address). We also filled out several forms that listed quite a bit of info for Barclays that I suspect were more for marketing purposes than required identification.
Barclays' fees are high so we opened an account at the local bank in our village as soon as we were in France again and closed the Barclays account. However, having the Barclays account was invaluable as it allowed us to get all our utilities set up and functioning.
Best of luck.
Ray