President Sarkozy's irritation with Barack Obama seems to be getting the better of him. In private and in public he barely misses an opportunity to put down the US President.
Before we get to today's swipe, a piece of fashion news will not have pleased the Elysée Palace. Elle, the Parisienne's fashion bible, has announced its 2009 best-dressed list, giving first place to Michelle Obama in the "political chic" category. Carla Bruni, Sarkozy's supermodel-wife, was relegated to second. Last year Bruni was ahead of Mrs Obama, but behind Asma al-Assad, the British-born wife of the Syrian President.
Elle's jury, led by Nathalie Rykiel, said the emphasis this year was on strong personalities who shine with their distinctive style. That was enough to knock Bruni, a career supermodel who has developed a demure new style, off her perch. "Mrs Obama resembles no-one else. Her style is unique," said Elle. "She encourages young designers and has succeeded in imposing the waisted cardigan as official dress."
Chou-chou, as she calls her husband, criticised the US President today over his decision to turn up at the forthcoming Copenhagen climate summit nearly a week ahead of the other national leaders, "when the decisions will be taken." Suggesting that Obama was imposing his own timetable, he said: "I would not want anyone to be discourteous towards the Danish Prime Minister, who has organised the conference."
Sarkozy was in Brazil seeing his friend President Lula in a tour to put together a coalition to lean on the United States over targets for greenhouse gas emissions at Copenhagen. He flew to Manaus, in the Amazon, to find that he was almost the only international leader at a summit chaired by President Lula to save the rainforest [Sarko as Amazon rep is not so far-fetched. A chunk of Amazon jungle is part of France -- in the form of Guyane, a French overseas département] Today Sarkozy has dropped into the Commonwealth summit in Trinidad to recruit Manmohan Singh, the Indian Prime Minister, to his cause.
Sarkozy's sniping at the US President has made the news in France this week. The French leader is seriously irritated by the cool shoulder that Obama has given to his overtures. He has not digested his refusal to drop in to the Elysée last June when he spent 24 hours next door with his family. Sarkozy has been telling colleagues and journalists that he considers that Obama has more style than substance and that his foreign policy so far is lamentable. He told the media earlier this month: "Obama has been in power for a year and he has already lost three local elections. I have won two parliamentary elections (French and European)."
L'Express magazine devoted its cover to Sarkozy's Obama Obsession this week [picture below]. Sarko is infuriated by the "irrational magic" that surrounds the US leader, it said. "Politics is more than form and glamour, it is about issues," Sarko was quoted as saying.
Sarkozy's attitude stems from a sense of rejection, say the insiders. Le Parisien recalled yesterday that the President started out by calling Obama "mon copain" -- my pal -- but dropped it after Obama resisted his charm. Already 18 months in power when Obama took office, Sarkozy wanted to play the mentor, keeping the high profile that he had created for himself as Europe's most dynamic leader.
The Americans have been consoling the French, telling them that Obama is the same to everyone. Distance is his style. But that does not please Sarkozy because he considers that he is Europe's paramount leader.
Ah, Switzerland, its Alpine pastures, its milk chocolate, its army knives and… its minarets. You might get that impression from the poster above. It is featuring in a campaign for one of those people's votes that only the Swiss come up with. The whole country votes on Sunday on a move to ban minarets from the country.
[Thursday update see end of post]
The controversial poster is not visible in the orderly, picturesque streets of Berne, the capital, where I have been talking to parliamentarians this morning, but it nevertheless represents an idea that a sizable minority of the Swiss agree with, according to the polls. There are too many Muslims in Switzerland and they should not be allowed to impose their religion in public, the argument goes. It is one of those Swiss paradoxes that the country which is most associated with tolerance, democracy and consensus should stage such a provocative referendum.
It was proposed by the nationalist Swiss People's Party (SVP), which had no trouble raising the requisite supporting signatures. The party, which is the biggest in the Swiss parliament, has a history of tweaking the populist nerve. This one got going when a mosque at Langenthal, a quiet town near Berne, was refused permission to build a minaret. Here it should be explained that there are a total of four working minarets in Switzerland and one built for decoration in 1865 by Philippe Suchard, the great chocolatier. The Muslim population has grown swiftly since the 1970s but its members, who come mainly from Turkey and the Balkans, still represent only four percent of the population. The majority are not practising. Swiss law already forbids the outdoor practice of religion, so there will be no muezzin calls to prayer in any event.
The absolute numbers are not important, I have just been told by Ulrich Schluer, an SVP parliamentarian who is one of the founders of the anti-minaret movement. Switzerland's Muslims are expanding swiftly and imposing practices -- notably the oppression of girls and women -- which break Swiss law, he said. "We are going in the direction of Germany and France and the UK. We have to stop it here," he said. For the SVP and its supporters, minarets are not part of Islamic faith, but symbols of aggression towards the rest of society.
Naturally, the Swiss establishment, including the Government, the churches and intellectual classes, are appalled by the referendum and are urging the country to reject it. Polls show that it should lose, but not by a great margin. Opponents expect about a 55/45 percent rejection. Hugues Hiltpold, a Radical party MP from French-speaking Geneva told me the vote was a "catastrophe for the image of Switzerland which ever way it goes." Banning minarets would only stigmatize Muslims. Switzerland has no problem with Islam and should live up to its tradition of absolute freedom of religion. He allowed that there was widespread disquiet over the presence of relatively large numbers of Muslim immigrants, but the answer to that lies in education and better integration, he said.
Behind the referendum lies anguish in Switzerland about the country losing the special identity which has been its pride for centuries. This quality of Swiss-ness, known by the German word Sonderfall, has taken a beating in recent years, with exposure of the country's less than gleaming wartime record and the recent global opprobrium over its banking secrecy. Hiltpold says rejection of the minaret motion will shore up la Suissitude, as the French-speaking Swiss call the exceptionalism, but the SVP and its backers see themselves as the last bastion against the country's betrayal by the elite which wants to integrate with Europe.
Switzerland, still one of the very richest nations, finally got around to joining the United Nations in 2002 and they have opened up to Europe with bilateral agreements, but there is no broad support for a referendum on joining the Union. The last one was rejected in the early 1990s.
I sought a view from Pascal Sciarini, director of political sciences at Geneva University. He sees the referendum as a battle between the still powerful rear-guard that wants to keep Switzerland closed and the educated elite who are for joining the world and making the most of a national brand name that is still one of the most admired and respected. "The trouble is that Switzerland has always defined its identity negatively. It cast itself against the surrounding big powers and did not want to open to the exterior," he said.
A note to any Swiss readers here, this is just an outsider's snapshot. Of course the matter is far more nuanced that I have conveyed in these lines.
Update: After posting this, I've talked with a few other players in the war of the minarets. Among them was Mutalip Karaademi, the Muslim community leader at Langenthal, the town near Berne where the anti-minaret campaign took off. He says he is shocked by the ferocity of the referendum advocates. "They think we are animals. We are normal people. We just have a different religion. ... They call us new names every day, like terrorists, Islamists. It's absurd. " Karaademi, an Albanian of Macedonian origin who works as a salesman, suggested building a minaret at the Lanenthal mosque three years ago. It was blocked by opponents and led to the referendum. He says his children are Swiss but after 27 years of living here and paying taxes, the authorities still refuse to grant him nationality. "People have to pay a lot of money to get it," he said.
[Picture. Outside the Swiss parliament In Berne. Taken with my phone at lunchtime today. ]
The Renault company has run into trouble with young French parents over the name of its latest car. They are unhappy that the firm has bestowed the name Zoé on its forthcoming all-electric offspring.
This is not the first time that Renault has caused discontent since it began giving its vehicles cute feminine names in the late 1980s. Clio and Mégane dropped from favour for girls after the car maker used them for two popular models. At least no-one was called Twingo or Safrane, names which Renault made up for other models. Scots were bemused by the choice four years ago of the pedestrian surname Logan for the low-cost car that has been a European hit for Renault. The oddest of all coinages was the Renault Vel-Satis, the company's luxury car, which has been a failure. The name was supposed to conjure up something futuristic.
With Zoé, Renault is taking a name that has been fashionable for the past few years in France. Its defenders think they have a chance to stop the company from devaluing it because the car remains at the concept stage and could be released under another name.
Petitions have sprung up on the internet. Sébastien Mortreux, from the northern town of Auby, is gathering signatures witha text that calls Renault's action shameful.
"Because our daughters have a beautiful first name, which must not be associated with that of a car, let's unite to bring pressure on a multi-national which is going to destroy this pretty name for our children. It is a scandal that they are able to use common first-names for a product".
A mother of a one-year-old Zoé called Rebecca226 is appealing for support on another site. "I am scandalised by this action and I find it totally abnormal that Renault should decide to take the name of a woman, that of my daughter, to apply to a car, that is to say a marketing product." The name will become ridiculous if it is used for the car, she wites.
You can detect a whiff of good old anti-capitalism in some of the comments on these sites. These are obviously not the kind of people who follow the fashion of giving brand names to their children, like Chanel, Fanta and Armani. Rue89, the excellent French news site, expands on the theme today.
Renault said that there is nothing insulting in the choice. "It is a name that evokes values of femininity, of youth, a playful spirit and vivacity," Valérian David, a Renault spokesman, told us. "It is also a reference to the concept of zero emission.... I think people will be able to tell the difference."
Using girl's names on cars is hardly new. In 1902, Emil Jellinek, a German-born businessman, called a car after his daughter Mercedes. Also, my prize for the oddest vehicle moniker goes to Citroen for a popular van, used by the police among others. It is called the Citroen Jumpy.
Nicolas Sarkozy should leave Albert Camus alone to rest in peace. That sums up the reaction among much of the thinking class and of the late writer's own son to a plan by the President to transfer Camus' remains to the Panthéon, the secular temple where the France inters its greatest men and women.
The country is about to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of the author of L'Etranger and La Peste. He died along with Michel Gallimard, his publisher, in a car accident in January 1960 near Sens, just south of Paris. Camus, a Nobel prize winner, has never been more popular in France and the world at large. Controversial in his life-time, he has emerged in recent decades as a towering figure. While the reputation of Jean-Paul Sartre, his colleague and rival, has sunk, Camus is revered as a humanist who twigged early to the evils of totalitarian ideas, whether of left or right. The problem is not Camus, it is Sarkozy.
The President is merely following a tradition of honouring the nation's heroes. Jacques Chirac, his predecessor, had the remains of Alexandre Dumas and André Malraux, the Gaullist hero and post-war writer, shifted to the Left Bank necropolis which houses Voltaire, Rousseau, Victor Hugo, Émile Zola, Jean Moulin, Marie Curie, Louis Braille and many less-known heroes.
But the operation looks too much like another stunt by Super Sarko and his slick staff to win public favour while his stock is low (down two points to 36 percent approval according to today's Ifop rating). The literary world and the left are always suspicious of Sarkozy's literary excursions. They also sense that he is using Camus as part of his dubious campaign on national identity.
They claim that Camus, author ofl'Homme Révolté and advocate of the individual over authority, would have been appalled. Olivier Todd, one of the most eminent of Camus' biographers, said "This is a gimmick. It's part of his technique of hijacking the intellectual milieu. It flies absolutely in the face of everything that Camus stood for.... Camus does not need Sarkozy. Sarkozy needs a little intellectual glitter."
Catherine Camus, one of his two surviving children, has mixed feelings [Sarkozy with her in 2007 picture]. On one hand, she approved because "this would be a symbol for people for whom life is very hard." But her father was a man who detested great honours, she noted. "That is why it is not a simple question."
Jean, her twin brother and co-heir to her father's very lucrative legacy, told le Monde via intermediaries yesterday that he is opposed. Moving his remains from his grave in Lourmarin, near Avignon, would be be a "counter-sense" for a man who abhorred pomp and state honours. He also suspects that Sarkozy is trying to cash in on his father, according to le Monde.
The Elysée has twice sent Catherine Pégard, a former journalist who is now a Sarkozy adviser, to try to change Jean's mind.
I have always found something a little macabre in the practice of panthéonisation. I would agree with Alain Finkielkraut (the football-loving philosopher) who says in today's JDD newspaper that he has nothing much against the honour. It would help show that a poor pied-noir-- a north African colonial -- was a component in Sarkozy's famous national identity. But, he said: "I have the feeling, perhaps superstitious, that he should not be extracted from his last resting place."
A small footnote. L'Etranger was the first book I read in French. As a 16-year-old British immigrant in a South Australian high school, I identified with Meursault, the anti-hero, as teenagers have done ever since. That book was for me the beginning of a long affair.
The Simpsons offer clever satire on American culture but they often fall flat when they take on foreigners. Here's a new example, a brief parody of Carla Bruni and Nicolas Sarkozy. This clip has taken off in France since it appeared on the internet at the end of the week.
The episode, called The Devil Wears Nada, went out in the US on November 15. Homer is accompanying Carl Carlson on a visit to Paris. They bump into the Bruni character, a femme fatale who throws herself at Carl. Note Sarkozy's office, with camembert on his desk and Bruni with a glass of wine. The President answers the phone: "You're getting cosy with Sarkozy."
French commentators have been noting the obvious. The episode is about American clichés and not about France or the Sarkozys. Don't forget that The Simpsons invented the taunt Cheese-eating surrender monkey. The Elysée Palace had nothing to say about the episode. Perhaps the producers should have asked the Sarkozys to do their own voices. When Tony Blair played himself on The Simpsons, the jokes were gentle in comparison.
A groan of disappointment went up from the commentating classes of old Europe today. After the long and painful birth of the Lisbon treaty, the Union has, they say, anointed nonentities to its two new supreme posts.
The word may be unkind for Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian who has become first President of the European Council, and Baroness Ashton of Upholland, its first "Foreign Minister" [both in picture]. But it is fair if you subscribed to the pitch that was sold to the people.
The Union would finally equip itself with a face who would stand equal to the US and Chinese Presidents. And the US Secretary of State would at last have a phone number for her opposite number in Europe — that of the new High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy.
Now these heavy-hitting posts have been bestowed on a kindly Christian Democrat who is known only in Flanders and Wallonia and to a Labour Party stalwart ... with zero experience running foreign affairs. The word heavyweight does not spring to mind.
For the establishment of French, German and other subscribers to the old "European Project", these choices make a mockery of the dream of a robust new Union. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former President who drafted the defunct Constitution of 2004, noted drily: “The Europeans have not picked a George Washington”. My friend Jean Quatremer, Libération's Brussels correspondent, talked of catastrophic choices today and demolished Van Rompuy with a nice French flourish: "Plus simple et plus cliché belge, tu meurs* [Any simpler and more Belgian cliché than him, you die*] Michel Rocard, a former French Socialist Prime Minister, made his case this morning. "This is a bad decision. I deeply regret it. Political Europe is dead," he said on France-Inter radio. But Rocard, a master of old-style backroom politics, knows that there was no chance that the Union would endow anyone with serious power to act in its name. It is not just that the national leaders do not want a rival big-shot, as Tony Blair might have been if he had been given the presidency. The matter is that the 27-member Union is far from a coherent political entity and does not want to be.
Despite British fixations about federalists, the species has long been endangered. France and Germany, the two big powers, have no interest in pooling more sovereignty. President Sarkozy and Chancellor Angela Merkel are the least Euro-enthusiastic leaders of their countries for decades. The smaller states to the north and east do not share the lingering federalism of the Benelux nations and the sections of the European Parliament.
The Union does many fine things. It ended Franco-German conflict and has bred prosperity. It runs a single market, harmonises regulations and keeps playing fields level, but its members never planned to stand back while Brussels-based supremos took over the show.
You can even argue that the creation of the new posts and the appointment of minor players have diluted further the notion of centralised power. In answer to Henry Kissinger's famous quip about Europe having no phone number, it now has four: José Manuel Barroso, President of the Commission, Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council, Cathy Ashton, the "Foreign Minister" and the member state that continues to rotate every six months chairing the Council of Ministers. From January, that will be Spain.
[* The expression alludes to the title of a popular 1982 comedy starring Aldo Maccione, "Plus beau que moi, tu meurs" -- More handsome than me, you die]
Big football victories are moments of national joy. Hundreds of thousands of French celebrated in the streets in big cities until the small hours this morning after their lads blasted their way into next year's World Cup final. Those were the Algerians, whose team beat Egypt in Khartoum. The rest of France's fans are skulking, voicing varying degrees of shame over the way les Bleus won their World Cup slot with a fraudulent goal against Ireland.
Thierry Henry [above], whose hand helped the ball reach William Gallas, the scorer, has come in for the worst abuse. (For non-experts here, the referee did not see the move. It was flagrant when replayed to the television millions but the ref's word is final in soccer). Henry is being pilloried as a volleyball player. French fans have assaulted his Facebook entry, along with outraged Irish ones. His Wikipedia entry was briefly pirated with obscenities. The sardonic headline in le Parisien said: "Henry gives a great helping hand to the Bleus." L'Equipe, the sports daily, said simply: "The Hand of God" -- a reference to Maradonna's similar exploit in 1986.
There is quiet relief, much disgust and no jubilation over a catastrophic performance by a side that long ago lost the affection of the nation. Henry's offence was worse than Zinedine Zidane's head-butt in the 2006 World Cup final, it is held, because that at least did not make the country feel like cheats.
Roselyne Bachelot, the Health and Sports Minister confessed to mixed feelings "between cowardly relief and great worry". President Sarkozy was less forthright, saying that the match was painful "but the main thing is we won."
They hauled a star philosopher onto the radio this morning to expound on the implications for the national soul. "There was cheating," said Alain Finkielkraut, a specialist in moral matters. "We are faced with a real matter of conscience," he said on Europe1. "From the moral point of view I would almost have preferred a defeat to a victory in these conditions. We certainly have nothing to be proud of." The key word there is "almost".
Along with everyone else, Finkielkraut stuck the boot into Raymond Domenech, the hugely unpopular national manager who saved his job with the dubious win. "Domenech is without shame," said the philospher. The manager did not help matters with typically insensitive comments after the match. He saw no foul and was happy. "All those who love French football are happy," he said on television.
France has at least been given an occasion to savour its love of paradox, or having it both ways. The shoddy victory can be both a source of shame and a great blessing at the same time. L'Equipe conveyed this with a headline: "Miraculously saved on the edge of the abyss". Le Parisien's front page said simply "Miraculous".
Bixente Lizarazu, one of France's 1998 World Cup winners, called the Bleus' performance catastrophic and said France should bow its head. Jean-Pierre Escalettes, President of the French Football Federation, said he understood Irish frustration but advised them to put it behind them. "You have to take a philosophical approach. Football is played on small details, however, qualification is still beautiful."
Away from les penseurs, Vincent Duluc of L'Equipe voiced the general view of the game. "It was an incredibly bad evening.. It was a miracle to have survived so long in such a void, with those little-boy passes and fear of average players, a miracle to have survived all those Irish opportunities in the heart of the most bungled match for ages in the history of the French team."
Back on national identity, last night's excitement offered a glimpse of the challenge that Sarkozy faces with his current campaign to define what it means to be French. I waded through crowds of joyous, flag-waving French-Algerians on my way home across Champs Elysées early this morning. There were very few French tricolors in sight. The young fans were nearly all French, yet they were celebrating a win by their parent's home country, with which they identify. And it's worth noting that most of the Algerian national team were born or trained in France.
Finkielkraut said all this goes to show that "it is ridiculous to say that French national identity is embodied in football."
Paris receives more visitors than any other town in the world, but nightlife in the City of Light is not much to write home about. That has been the story for decades. For all the glories of Paris, its rivals New York, London, Berlin and Barcelona offer more excitement for night-clubbers and other fans of the small hours.
Things have got so bad recently, with clampdowns on noise and police closures of celebrated spots, that club, discothèque and bar owners are petitioning the Culture Ministry to save the Paris night scene from disaster. And today, Mayor Bertrand Delanoe and 330 venue owners have launched a bilingual internet site called Paris Night Life to promote the hottest spots.
The petition, which has gathered more than 12,000 signatures in less than three weeks, says Paris is on the verge of becoming the "European capital of sleep" because of bureaucracy and the intolerance of the increasingly bourgeois population of the capital. Nightlife is becoming so tepid that Paris area residents are heading elsewhere for their fun, says the petition, organised by a group from the techno and electronic music scene.
"It is now well established that Paris has abandoned all kind of European leadership to the benefit of towns such as London, Barcelona, Prague and Berlin, to which more and more French professional artistes are departing for exile."
The group complain of police harassment and new enforcement of antique regulations, such as a ban on dancing in premises licensed as bars or concert halls. Several well-known establishments have had their licenses suspended for infringing the rules. They include the Batofar, a former lightship moored on the Seine, and la Flèche d'Or, an indie music club. This week saw the closure in bankruptcy of La Locomotive, a celebrated boîte de nuit in Pigalle. The neighbouring Moulin-Rouge, a tourist factory, is taking it over to convert it into a shop-restaurant.
The petition wants the city to create "tolerance zones" in nightlife quarters such as the Bastille, the Marais and Oberkampf. [Petition poster in picture says: Closed due to dead city. Please apply to the neighbouring capital]
Jean-Bernard Bros, Mayor Delanoe's deputy in charge of tourism, said the new internet site was the first non-commercial venture of its kind in Europe. "We want to regild the image of the Paris night," he said. The idea is to demystify the scene by listing clubs and other venues according to the type of music, ambiance and tribes who they appeal to.
As usual, it's a very French idea, centralising information on something as spontaneous as the after-hours music scene, but they need all the help they can get. Mayor Delanoe has also been doing his bit, with the creation of his Nuit Blanche, an annual all-night art festival, and other schemes. So far his efforts have not succeeded in making nocturnal Paris hip again. A study on "night-time competitiveness", commissioned for the site, ranked Paris fifth, behind Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin and London. "Paris does not stand out," said the report, by EGE. It suffers from "an image as a museum city, the weakness of night transport, the cultural vacuum in certain districts.... and numerous closures of establishments" by the police.
As an occasional night owl, I would put the lack of transport at the top. It is almost impossible to find a taxi after one am, by which time the Métro has stopped and only a few bus services operate. And since the police have started alcohol-testing cyclists, that rules out Vélib self service bikes, leaving no alternative to walking.
This one is for Sarkologists. The video here has become an internet hit over the past couple of days because it gives an unusual glimpse of the odd, defensive character of the President of France.
The scene is a private ceremony at the Elysée Palace a week ago. Sarkozy is praising Dany Boon, the comedian-film director (see last post), before awarding him the Légion d'Honneur. He breaks from his text to ramble in a sentimental and rather bitter way about the vicissitudes of life -- notably on race, religion, love and success. We hear Sarkozy casting himself as the unloved outsider -- the character familiar from his biographies.
Guy Birenbaum, an acerbic commentator, put the video on his blog, calling it "a formidable and fascinating self-portrait of the real Sarkozy." He is "at times tender, sometimes funny, occasionally hurtful without meaning to be".
After praising the fortitude of the people of Sangatte, scene of the former Channel refugee camp, Sarkozy makes dubious jokes about Boon's humble northern France origins as the son of an Algerian truck driver and a Catholic French mother. "Not great as a starting point, you have to admit. Luckily the Republic opened doors for you... You already chose fiction over reality in preferring the name of Dany Boon to the very pretty real name of Daniel Hamidou.... I can take the liberty since my name is Sarkozy. But Hamidou, well, try and make a career with that!" Watch Boon's face as Sarko labours this point.
Then he mention's Boon's conversion to Judaism, the religion of his wife Yael. "To fall in love with someone. To convert. To understand her culture... Not behave in the classical way -- the man full of sucess who leads and the wife behind who follows. I find that quite stunning. We'll have to talk about it, it's a thing that interests me." The husband of Carla Bruni says that he would say more, except he has spotted the video camera.
He says Boon is the example of a man "who can succeed without making a scandal, without insulting anyone, without believing he has to sign up to the dominant way of thinking. That's quite strange, and on top of that people love you." You don't need to be a shrink to see that Sarko is contrasting his own case there.
"I find that very uplifting," he continues. "You don't have to play the false intellectual. You don't need to bite the hand that feeds you (cracher dans la soupe). You don't need to belong to a current of thought that is supposedly obligatory when you belong to a certain milieu. You don't need to brag."
Then Sarkozy, one of France's biggest braggers, reaches a self-revealing conclusion. "As for me, I am not obliged to decorate only people whom I do not know, only people that I do not like, only people who have spoken ill of me. I am going to do something strange. I am going to decorate someone who deserves it..."
Those are bizarre remarks for a head of state but they are pure Sarkozy. Members of his cabinet report similar rambling addresses at their weekly meeting with him. He has always had a persecution complex and it seems to be getting worse under the pressure of the mockery which is showered on him, not just on the internet, but from his own side as well. For the past two months, there has been a stream of anti-Sarkozy polémiques, greatly amplified by the internet (and mostly reported here). Much of it has been self-inflicted -- like the Prince Jean affair and last week's false claim to have taken a pick to the Berlin wall on November 9, 1989. On that story, it was interesting that TF1, the TV network with the most influential news, did not bother to mention Sarko's Berlin wall embarrassment, though it was the top story on internet sites and fed cafe and workplace chatter for days.
The Elysée is working on a strategy to quell these distracting brushfires. They are costing Sarko public support. His approval ratings have dropped some six points over the past month to well below 40 percent.
France has been awash with nostalgic, sentimental comedy films for quite a few years. Many of them have fallen flat because the mechanism is too creaky. Feel-good films require you to suspend disbelief, so the audience has to be hooked quickly. I've just seen two of the latest. Both feature fine actors. Both are fairy tales about revenge by modest victims against powerful institutions. One flops while the other soars, for me at least.
The first is Mic Macs à Tire Larigot, [trailer here] from Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the creater of Amélie, or Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain, to give it its original title. I don't know how they will translate this one. The title could be roughly conveyed in British English as Carry On Capering (any suggestions?). More literally, it means Funny business like there's no tomorrow. The film uses the same tricks as Amélie, turning modern Paris into a magical by-gone place full of loveable eccentrics.
 Dany Boon, the biggest comedy star of the moment, leads a band of vagabond chineurs -- junk dealers, rag-and-bone merchants -- in an outlandish scheme to bring down two arms manufacturers. The film feels like an Amélie sequel without the charm -- despite Boon and the estimable André Dusollier, who plays one of the bad guys.
The other is Le Concert [trailer here], by the Romanian-French director Radu Mihaileanu. It's a mix of romantic comedy, political satire and farce featuring a cast of excellent Russian actors and French stars including Miou Miou, François Berléand and Mélanie Laurent [top picture] -- who made an international début this year in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.
The plot is preposterous but fun -- especially if you know Russia and France. Andrei Filipov, played by Alexei Guskov, is a former conductor of the Bolshoi Orchestra who was dismissed on Leonid Brezhnev's orders in 1980 for refusing to fire his Jewish musicians. Working now as a janitor at the theatre, he intercepts a fax inviting the Bolshoi to perform at the Châtelet theatre in Paris. He puts together an orchestra from out-of-work musicians and takes them to Paris to play Tchaikovsky's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra. The soloist is a celebrated French violinist Anne-Marie Jacquet, played by Laurent.
The film runs through the gamut of clichés about loveable chaotic Slavs and haughty Parisians and it is a little long on Jewish jokes and gypsies. But it works because Mihaileanu has a delicate, humane touch and a fine understanding of the two national characters. The funniest part, shot in Moscow in Russian, makes fun of Putin's Russia, with its nouveaux riches and ordinary people struggling to survive in a shabby city. One of the funniest moments is a shoot-out at an oligarch's wedding. The fake orchestra hires as its manager the still-loyal Soviet communist party official who fired the conductor. Like all good Soviets, he dreams of visiting Paris and when he gets here, heads straight for a session with the comrades at the Communist Party's much reduced headquarters on the Place Colonel Fabien. The gags are sometimes predictable, but they are transcended by a beautiful, emotional ending of the kind that everyone expects in feel-good movies.
Despite its big budget, stars and brand name, I don't see the Jeunet film exporting well. It lacks Audrey Tautou and the romantic appeal of Amélie. Even in France it is not scoring very well. Le Concert, on the other hand, is number two at the French box-office -- despite subtitled Russian for about half the film. It should do very well around Europe and beyond.
 Clint Eastwood brings down the curtain on a busy foreign policy week for Nicolas Sarkozy tonight. The President is decorating the Hollywood star with the order of Commander of the Legion of Honour [Picture left from after the event]. Eastwood, 79, is rising from officer grade, awarded to him by President Chirac, to almost the highest distinction that France bestows on anyone. What is the service that Eastwood has rendered ? Sarkozy's office says the honour is deserved because Eastwood "is a global star who is very fond of France."
Eastwood is one of France's -- and Sarkozy's -- favourite Americans. The President's love-hate relationship with the United States has turned out to be little different from that of his predecessors. Sarkozy began in 2007 almost by throwing himself into the arms of the United States. He took his first summer holiday as President in New England, not far from the Bushes. He has cooled off in a big way. Obama's refusal to take up his offer of special complicity has been taken as a personal affront by the French President. On Monday, he tore a strip off Obama over his failure to come to Berlin for the Wall celebrations, according to a leak of his remarks in le Canard Enchaîné.
"Obama is very disappointing in foreign policy. He doesn't just have difficult relations with me," he was quoted as saying. "It's the same with (Chancellor) Merkel and (Prime Minister) Brown. Europe does not excite him. As for the rest of the world, it's a disappointment too. The language has changed. There has been an opening up. The hand is outstretched but it is grasped by no-one."
A few days earlier Sarkozy launched into an anti-Obama tirade at the weekly cabinet meeting, comparing himself highly favourably with the US president, who, he said, had only managed to produce a single reform so far.(Le Canard is usually quite accurate with its Sarkozy quotes. Ministers read it closely to find out what the boss is thinking)
A colleague from the New York Times has just sent me this interesting quote from Obama's book “Dreams From My Father” . It explains his coolness to Europe. Talking of an early visit, he writes:
By the end of the first week or so, I realized that I’d made a mistake. It wasn’t that Europe wasn’t beautiful; everything was just as I imagined it. It just wasn’t mine. I felt as if I were living out someone else’s romance; the incompleteness of my own history stood between me and the sites I saw like a hard pane of glass…”
The image of the rejected suitor also applies to Sarkozy's big event this week -- the presence of Angela Merkel at the Armistice Day ceremony at the Arc de Triomphe. Two days after the Berlin ceremonies, it was moving to see a German leader, surrounded by German uniforms, taking part for the first time in France's remembrance of Germany's 1918 capitulation. Sarkozy's aim was to emulate the gesture of reconciliation by the late President Mitterrand when he held hands with Chancellor Helmut Kohl at the Verdun battlefield in 1984.
 The ceremony was part of Sarkozy's push to revive the Franco-German axis that was traditionally the core of the European Union. He has returned to the safety of the old European locomotive after giving up on a new cosy relationship with Britain.Merkel has warmed to Sarkozy of late but she is wary of his grand schemes for unity. These include the permanent exchange of Cabinet Ministers. While Sarkozy's Arc de Triomphe speech was long on poetry, the German Chancellor used hers to ask for substance -- closer coordination on the economy, the environment and so on. Berlin deplores France's profligacy while Germany is trying to rein in its public deficits.
It was easy to see that the rekindled Franco-German affair is still much warmer on the French side."France looks a little like the rejected lover in this couple de raison,"le Monde said on Wednesday..
Sarkozy confirmed his conversion to the Franco-German cause in a remark quoted by le Parisien yesterday. Everything in Europe, he said, is finally decided à deux, between France and Germany. We'll see if that is the case when the 27 leaders thrash out their choice for the new President of Europe at a summit next Thursday. Merkel and Sarkozy are reported to be behind Herman Van Rompuy, the Belgian Prime Minister.
In the meantime, Sarkozy found a moment to promote his domestic theme of the moment: the nature of the national soul. On the site of a World War Two Resistance monument in the Vercors, he revived a speech from his election campaign on patriotic pride. "One builds nothing on self-hatred, on hatred for one's own kind and detestation for one's own country. That is why we must talk about our national identity. It is a noble debate... not dangerous," he said. In passing, he repeated his view that Muslim women with covered faces "have no place in France".
Down in the polls half way through his term of office, Sarkozy is getting good mileage with his great debate on national identity. The government has circulated a list of topics for public meetings organised by its local officers (Read here). But two days after his hymn to Europe in Paris, Sarkozy neglected in his patriotic speech to make a single reference to Europe or any other country.
It seemed for a while that this year's Goncourt literary prize came and went without the usual row or scandal. Now we have one, of a sort.
There was general approval last week when France's most prestigious book award went to Marie NDiaye, 42, a Senegalese-French novelist. No woman had won the Goncourt for a decade, she is the first female black laureate and her winning book Trois Femmes Puissantes (Three Powerful Women) was a best-seller.
But then the media dug up her less than glowing views on President Sarkozy. NDiaye went to live in Berlin in 2007 "in large part because of Sarkozy," she told les Inrockuptibles, an arts magazine, last August. "I find the police state, vulgar atmosphere detestable. I find Besson, Hortefeux, those people, monstruous. That refers to Eric Besson, Sarkozy's Minister for Immigration and National Identity, and Brice Hortefeux, the Interior Minister and close Sarkozy friend.
That was too much for Eric Raoult, a prominent MP for Sarko's Union for a Popular Movement. He tabled a parliamentary question to Frédérick Mitterrand, the Culture Minister, asking whether "the duty of a person who defends the literary colours of France should not be to show a certain respect towards its institutions." Her remarks insulted ministers of the Republic and the head of state, he said. A Goncourt laureate should observe un devoir de réserve, the obligation of discretion that is required of servants of the state.
The Goncourt crew hit back today, saying their prize winners have never been bound by a duty of respect for the state and its leader. Christian Paul, a Socialist MP, weighed in, accusing Raoult of "ignoble intimidation... an execrable form of censorship."
But now NDiaye has spoilt the fun by trying to soften her words. On Europe 1 radio today she said she did not mean to cause offence. "I don't like saying things like that. It was very excessive. I do not want to look like I was fleeing some kind of unbearable tyranny," she said. "For a while, I have found the atmosphere in France to be quite depressing, rather morose. It seemed that Berlin is more exciting."
We are waiting for a response from Frédo Mitterrand, who has not said much in public since the media last month dug up his adventures as a sex tourist in Thailand. In the meantime, Sarkozy has been brushing up on his Goncourt winners. He has just finished "re-reading" A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. There was a big row in 1919 when Proust won the prize because he had not fought in the Great War.
Thursday update: Mitterrand has entered the fray, not very courageously. He has refused to take sides. "Writers who receive the Prix Goncourt have the right to say what they like," he said. "Eric Raoult, a friend and a very estimable man, has the right as a citizen and a parliamentarian to say what he thinks."
PS, on the subject of the Great War, did anyone notice that Carla Bruni seemed to be wearing high-than-usual heels and really towered over the President at today's Armistice Day ceremony with Angela Merkel ? And why wasn't she wearing a hat:
Your writer
Charles Bremner is Paris Correspondent for The Times. He started out as a journalist in Russia and then moved to the United States. He has reported from all the continents but most enjoys observing the exotic tribe on Britain's doorstep. Though France is home, he avoids going native by offering what the locals call an "Anglo-Saxon" eye on their country.
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