Charles Bremner - Times Online - WBLG

Royal runs

 

    Ségolène Royal has finally declared that she is running for the presidency of France. In answer to Frank Schnittger and the others who would like more of the newspaper on this blog, here is the link to a full portrait of Ségo and her campaign that I did for today's Times.

How can she suddenly announce something that the world has known for a year? Royal's declaration last night was a good demonstration of how the media run far ahead of reality -- or perhaps create it. For months we have all been projecting the race as a simple duel between Ségo and Sarko -- Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right star.

Yet the elections are seven months away, neither has yet been nominated by their parties and a dozen other candidates of various stripe are jostling in the starting gates. In the eyes of Royal's rivals and even among some of her own entourage, the media coronation of the Socialist superwoman is an act of presumption which risks back-firing. Since 1995, French voters have made a habit of turning against the candidates and issues which the media have prematurely cast as automatic winners.      

Chirac acts on movie

Imagine George Bush signing off a 140 million dollars a year charge from the Treasury because his conscience had been stung by a new Hollywood film. Imagine the reaction if he timed this for the day the movie went on release.

President Chirac did just that today, announcing that France would restore full pensions to World War Two veterans from its former African and Arab colonies.

Chirac was spurred into action by Indigènes, a prize-winning feature on the story of the 250,000 colonial forces that fought with heavy loss of life in France, Italy and Germany. Directed by Rachid Bouchareb and starring Jamel Debbouze, a popular comedian, the film exposes the way that 250,000 colonial servicemen were used as front line cannon fodder, suffering a quarter of all French military casualties between 1939 and 1945.

Madame la Présidente

The telephone rings in the Elysée palace. The first woman president of France picks it up and exclaims in English, "Hi, Hillary!".

The scene could be a glimpse of France's future if Ségolène Royal, the Socialist favourite, wins next spring's elections for the succession to President Chirac. It comes, however, from Etat de Grâce (State of Grace), a mini-series opening tomorrow on France 2 television which depicts a fictional first Madame la Présidente de la République.

The six-part comic drama is causing waves because the fictional depiction of contemporary political life has long been taboo in France and even documentaries on serving politicians are only now beginning to appear. Anglo-American shows and docudramas, such as the West Wing or Stephen Frears' new film The Queen, are still unthinkable in France.

The makers of the five million euro series say that that they enjoyed lucky timing. They planned it before the unexpected ascent of Royal, 53, in the opinion polls last winter. However, they clearly borrowed from the "Madonna of the polls" when they shot the series last spring, giving Royal-like traits to President Grace Bellanger, the glamorous 42-year-old heroine played by Anne Consigny.  Like Royal, she is a political outsider and she is opposed by the men who rule her party. She also has the same suits and earrings.
   

You say you want a revolution

Ségolène Royal, the leftwing favourite for the next spring's elections, is preaching the gospel of "participative democracy". She is using her web site to seek ideas from citizens for governing France when she becomes president. So I thought I would copy Ségo in a humble way and ask for suggestions. The question is: Does France need a revolution ?

Here's the background. From October 6-8, a band of eminent thinkers and doers from both sides of the Channel are gathering in London for a weekend of debate and entertainment on the relative merits of those eternally competing tribes, Gauls and Anglo-Saxons. The IQ2 London:Paris Festival will bring heavyweight fire to bear on the themes that get us going on this and other Brito-French blogs: the rival social models, idealists versus shopkeepers, the differing treatment of children and education, state control versus the market, and all the rest of the love-hate, je t'aime, moi non plus, relationship.

Sarko measures up to Bush

  This picture has caused a lot of French fuming. In it, we see Nicolas Sarkozy with George W in the White House. The Interior Minister who is leading the centre-right into next spring's presidential elections, was given the honour of a brief US presidential drop-by last week when he visited Stephen Hadley, the National Security adviser.  Bush popped into Hadley's office to shake the Sarko hand and chat for a few minutes as a gesture of gratitude for the Frenchman's friendliness towards the USA (see September 11 post). 

Sarkozy, whose team negotiated the session and persuaded the White House to release a photograph, was thrilled to be seen as a statesman hobnobbing with the chief. This time next year, he hopes to be doing it again as President of France. But for many in France, including President Chirac, Sarko was guilty of grovelling before the adversary, if not the devil, and the picture compounded the offence.

France cheers the fast train

France has a hard time finding things to feel good about these days, so it is natural that the country is pausing to salute the Train à Grande Vitesse. President Francois Mitterrand drove off the first high-speed train service, from Paris to Lyon, 25 years ago this week. To mark the event, the SNCF, the state railways, are displaying two full-scale wooden versions of the elegant, 190 mph (300kph) trains at a weekend fête by the Eiffel tower. And the politicians and media are pausing to take stock of an extraordinary project that really has changed everyone's lives.

Like the Concorde, the Franco-British supersonic airliner, the TGV was a hugely expensive showcase for national prestige. Unlike the delta-winged wonder of 1960s engineering, which never made a penny, the train has fulfilled all hopes. It symbolises French modernity and it has shrunk the map. It has brought distant cities into commuting reach of Paris and turned the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, London and Brussels into easy weekend trips of only two or three hours from the centre of the capital. 

French Banker in Novel Shock

You would have to be mad or an exhibitionist to have an illicit affair with Christine Angot. A high society Paris banker is now paying the price -- or perhaps enjoying the publicity.

France's queen of "auto-fiction", in which the author narrates her private life in psychiatric detail, has just delivered her latest confessional oeuvre. Two weeks after its release, Rendez-vous has reached the top 10 of the best-seller lists and the 47-year-old enfant terrible is riding her usual media wave. While the critics have been pronouncing on Angot's art, her book has been feeding voyeuristic mirth inside the Paris establishment. 

The weight of French learning

It's that time of year again when the streets are full of small children staggering under the load of giant school bags.  My 12-year-old daughter insists that she needs to lug her 10 kilos of books, binders, exercise books and equipment every day to her classes. On top of that, she has to look cool, which means carrying it all in one of those floppy back-packs made by the single US brand that is de rigueur for French teenagers (not the classic cartable in the photo). Every year, the over-loaded cartable is a national story and nothing happens.      

Now, help is at hand. Pupils on the Côte d'Azur are being supplied with memory sticks in a scheme to ease the back-breaking load. The age of the virtual satchel is at hand, we are told.

France bashes Bush -- but wait for next year

The French television, press and radio have been doing as thorough a job as anyone in marking the September 11 anniversary. The air has been thick with  decent documentaries and reportage on the attacks and the aftermath for America. Inevitably, though, the five-year mark has allowed France to indulge in what I call one of its Soviet moments. These are the times when the country's feuding political tribes unite to deplore a universally agreed evil. Listening to most of the commentary today, you would believe that le mal du moment is President George W Bush.

That moment, 40 years on

I am off to Deauville for the day. The annual American film festival there has given me an excuse to indulge in nostalgia. For those of a certain generation, the boardwalk at the Normandy resort is forever a movie scene. Jean-Louis Trintignant has driven his white Ford Mustang through a winter night from Paris. Cruising along the seafront in the dawn light, he spots Anouk Aimée on the deserted beach. Re-united, the lovers embrace and the soundtrack strikes up one of the cinema's eternal anthems, Francis Lai's theme for Un Homme et une Femme. [listen to cha-ba-da-ba-da]

Claude Lelouch, the director of A Man and a Woman, was back in Deauville this week, 40 years on, for the naming of a square after him. La Place Claude Lelouch is the spot by the boardwalk where Trintignant's racing driver stopped the car. Lelouch, now 70, drove up to the ceremony in the same old Mustang with Anouk Aimée, 74, at his side. 

All right. Forty years after its 1966 release, A Man and a Woman comes over as quantum kitsch. For a more jaded, younger generation, Lelouch's film is a syrupy love story set to a shopping mall samba, or perhaps it was just a Ford Mustang commercial. But if, in the late 60s,  you were a dreamy teenager in a lesser Australian city, Un Homme et une Femme knocked your socks off.

Blogging for French votes

Just about everyone knows by now that the French blog more than anyone. So, with eight months to go to the presidential elections, it is not a surprise that the politicians have piled into the blog business -- with mixed results.

First the background. Over four million people run weblogs in France, according to an Ipsos survey last month. That amounts to over seven percent of the population. Half are under the age of 24 and 54 percent are female. Skyblog, the biggest host, claims as many as five million on its platform. Another survey showed that 60 percent of French internautes visited a blog in May, compared with 40 percent in Britain and 33 percent in the USA. Just over half the population is wired to the internet, 85 percent on broadband.

There is no mystery to the Gallic love affair with blogging.

Banned in France

There is no group easier to offend than the French educational establishment. On the eve of their return to work, teachers, along with the ministry that employs most of them and parent-teacher organisations, are upset this week over a survey of violence in schools. Le Point, a news magazine, had the effrontery to publish a league table of the most troubled lycées -- senior high schools. It ranked the Condorcet school of Nîmes as the country's most violent.

As in most of Europe, the breakdown of discipline in schools is a hot topic, with the worst episodes, such as the wounding of teachers, making the news. But the educators are crying scandal, outrage and shock over Le Point's table, compiled from ministry statistics. The public should simply not be given such information, they argue.

This has got me thinking about the many fields of French life that are still barred from public discussion, either by law or simple taboo.