Charles Bremner - Times Online - WBLG

New Asterix is unfunny and un-French, say critics.

It's usually a good idea to see a film before reviewing it, but the critical trashing inflicted on this week's new mega-movie is a story in itself -- especially after our recent salute to French culture. 

For months, France has been bludgeoned with pre-launch publicity for Astérix at the Olympic Games, the third feature made since 1999 from the cartoon adventures of the plucky Gaul. The first two, produced by Claude Berri, scored at the box office and the critics quite liked the second, Mission Cleopatra, which sold 15 million tickets in 2002. That version, directed by Alain Chabat, benefited from the subversive humour of Jamel Debbouze, a comedian from the banlieue. It was full of in-jokes and turned the Gauls-versus-Romans theme into a satire of modern France.

The trouble was that the film did not travel, at least not much beyond French-speaking Belgium and Quebec. The French sense of humour didn't work for the Germans and Russians, let alone Britons or Americans. This time, they are taking no chances. The new Astérix, a 78-million euro epic packed with stars and special effects, was de-Gallicised to appeal to the widest non-French audience.

Obama wants to see Sarkozy

Barack Obama has delivered his thoughts on Nicolas Sarkozy to tomorrow's Paris Match. He's diplomatic but since it's his first foray into what could be a new US-French relationship, here's what he says. I have translated it back into English:

Sarkozy came to visit me in my office in Washington. It was before his election in France. He is an energetic man with a lot of talent. I am impressed by his way of looking at problems that are specific to France, with a new approach.

He is not tied down by the weight of tradition or dogma. He is an example for many leaders. In politics today, you have to look at things with a new vision. I want to go to France and meet him as soon as I win the nomination. I want to see with him how we can strengthen Franco-American relations further.

He also plans to go to London and Berlin. Obama tells Match that his first step to improve the image of the US abroad will be to finish the Iraq war and close the Guantanamo prison camp. As soon as he is elected, he will organise a summit with the world's Muslim leaders "to discuss with them frankly how to narrow the gap which is widening every day between Muslims and the west." 

We don't know Sarko's view of the Democratic contest, but there is no doubt that the French media and political world want a President Obama. As Jack Lang, the old Socialist showman, says: "He stands for  the America that we like." Hillary Clinton does not enjoy such a French fan club though Bill is widely admired.  Some leftish organs, such Libération and le Nouvel Observateur, are taking their wishes for reality and sometimes sound as though the Obama White House is almost here.

Jérôme Kerviel, world hero

The lawyers for Jérôme Kerviel, France's super-trader, say that he is stunned by his unwanted celebrity. If he takes a look at the internet he may be relieved to find that, mockery aside, he has become a world hero.

Over the past few days fan clubs and tribute sites have sprouted across the net: They include Facebook, dedicated sites such as Jeromekerviel.com,   and Wikipedia, Youtube and Dailymotion.

After half a million Google searches yesterday, JK's admirers are singing his praises as "The Che Guevara of Finance", the "James Bond of the Soc Gen". The real JK may have lost his Facebook friends on the day of his arrest, but 11 new Jérôme Kerviels are on Facebook at the moment, with 30 groups in French and English. On one he has over 900 fans, many of whom proclaim their love for  the clean-cut Breton whose pals called him Tom Cruise.

The T-shirt above, for sale at 17.99 dollars, features on the "Jérôme Kerviel Should Win the Nobel Prize for Economics" entry.

JK's new stardom comes in two flavours. There is mockery, much of it anti-French, apparently from professionals in the Anglo-American financial world. Within hours of the scandal breaking last Thursday, this lot was circulating the spoof news story about Kerviel being stressed out with his 30-hour working week.

Then there are the real admirers, who are voicing the widespread glee in France at the idea of a young provincial making fools of the capitalist establishment.

Cécilia wins in court. Sarkozy sues over advert

To inject a lighter note after all the banking agony, here is today's palace news. In a new episode of lèse-Sarko, the Elysée is threatening legal action against Ryanair for taking his majesty's name in vain along with that of Carla Bruni in le Parisien today (see below).

And Cécilia Ciganer, 50, the former Mrs Sarkozy, has won 30,000 euros preliminary damages and a ban over this week's cover of Closer magazine which compares her physique, not very favourably, with that of the new presidential favourite, aged 39.

The former Mrs Sarko is also seeking a further 250,000 euros for the emotional wounds that she suffered from this breach of her privacy. The court found the pictures to be maliciouis and Michèle Cahen, her lawyer, said: "It's horrible. It's like two consumer products being compared."

The palace is also not amused by the low-cost airline's advert which shows Bruni thinking: "With Ryanair, my whole family can attend my marriage." David Martinon, the presidential spokesman, said the advert was unacceptable and the lawyers had been called in. Clearly enjoying the publicity, Matthieu Glasson, the company's French marketing director, offered an apology. He admitted that the airline was being cheeky but said the advert did not show the future royal couple in a bad light.

 

Trader Jérôme was doing his best for the bank

It's five days since Société Générale announced that its humble trader had nearly broken the bank and the reputation of French finance. Yet Daniel Bouton, the executive chairman, was back on the radio this morning insisting that he was not personally responsible for anything and had no plans to leave the job.

Bouton, 57, [below] even played the line, which I mentioned last time: "responsable mais pas coupable". Jean-Pierre Elkabach of Europe 1 asked him if he felt guilty for letting Jérôme Kerviel [picture above at recent party] expose the bank by 50 billion euros without anyone knowing. "I feel responsible...not personally responsible," said Bouton, who called the final five bilion euro loss a "terrible accident".

It was just like a company that suffers the misfortune of a factory fire, he said. "The director is not blamed for that." The sound from Bouton and his bank colleagues is an aural version of the Gallic shrug. They are saying that it is regrettable but these things happen.

Kerviel has lost his job and is in custody. He is to face charges of fraud and breach of trust, we have just heard from Jean-Claude Marin, the Paris prosecutor. He could be sentenced to up to seven years but Marin said that it seemed that he was not seeking personal gain, merely the credit that he would win with his employers and the ensuing bonuses.  As I write, a couple of hundred police are surrounding the offices of the investigating judges near our bureau. Kerviel is about to be brought in for his first round with the magistrates and they are treating him like some big-time criminal.

It is unlikely that Bouton will keep his job for long. President Sarkozy is spitting blood over the affair and what he sees as the botched handling by Bouton and Christian Noyer, Governor of the Banque de France.  Sarko, the ultimate micro-manager when things go wrong, is aghast that he was not informed until three days into a crisis that would shake the state. 

Trust us, say French bankers

You could hear the closing of ranks across the Paris establishment this morning as the enarques -- old boys from ENA, the high civil service school -- reassured France that everything is just fine in the French banking world.

They are rallying around Daniel Bouton, the former ENA civil servant who still heads Société Générale a day after announcing that one of his junior employees had fiddled away five billion (7.2 billion dollars) euros without anyone noticing.

Here's Friday night's latest on Jérôme Kerviel, 31, perpetrator of la fraude gigantesque, the man who lost the equivalent to the GNP of Senegal or a year's worth of the French RMI, the basic benefit of the long-term unemployed.

We were too busy yesterday tracking down this lowly trader fou (rogue) that there was no time to blog. The bank refused to divulge Kerviel's name, but it was circulating by mid-day and his Facebook entry led us straight to his friends, most of whom swiftly left his list.

We are told to believe that Kerviel was an amazing whiz with computers who simply managed to outsmart the bank that was supposed to have one of the world's most rigorous systems for managing risk.

Majesty at King Sarko's Court

We joke about President Sarkozy taking himself for the king of France but today in a ceremony at the Elysée Palace he was addressed as "your majesty" to his face.

King Sarko must have thought for a second that Jacques Attali, his illustrious adviser, was taking the mickey when he decided to open his address with the words of  Anne-Robert Turgot, the finance minister in the reign of Louis XVI in the 1770s.

Handing over his grand reform plan to the President, Attali said:

I seek not that your Majesty adopt my principles without having examined them, but, when he will have understood their justice and necessity, I beg him to maintain their implementation with firmness, without letting himself be frightened by the clamour that is unavoidable."

This could have been a line straight out of a delicious book, published this week, which recounts life at the court of the Emperor Nicolas I as if it were the Versailles of Louis XIV. In Chronique du règne de Nicolas Ier, Patrick Rambaud, an eminent novelist, pulls off a tour de force with a pastiche in the voice of Saint-Simon, the chronicler of the Sun King's court. I'll come back in a minute to la Baronne d'Ati, la protégée, and to the haughty Empress Cécilia and the Cardinal de Guéant, the crafty royal chamberlain.

First le Marquis d'Attali and his palace audience:

Bad time for French market lessons

The anguish in the financial world has made this week a poor moment for convincing France of the joys of the free market. In a piece of unlucky timing, President Sarkozy will be expected to do that tomorrow when he is presented with a radical remedy for France's economic ills.

The cure is a batch of ideas devised over the past eight months at Sarkozy's request by Jacques Attali, the famous Paris economic strategist, and 40 lesser eminences. They could be entitled "300 ways to save France".

Sarko asked Attali, who remains best-known as economics guru to François Mitterrand, the late Socialist president,  to suggest ways of helping the French economy break free of the bonds that stifle growth. Even Sarko, with his fondness for la rupture, was not bargaining on how far Attali would go down the "Anglo-Saxon road".

We visited this last autumn when Attali's ideas for shop-keepers were emerging. In the final version, which is circulating in draft, he proposes removing or loosening most of the restrictions on trades and professions, from hair dressers and supermarkets to lawyers and taxi drivers. He also proposes opening the frontiers to worker immigrants, letting people work beyond retirement age and even the assessment of school teachers performance by their pupils. Read on in today's newspaper.

The Sarko magic fails

Regulars here will not be surprised to hear that France has gone sour on Nicolas Sarkozy. Many people have been turned off by the president's excesses over the Christmas holidays with Carla Bruni. He also blundered with his indifference towards the country's feeling of impoverishment when he staged a grand news conference on January 8. The final straw was media speculation last week about whether he had married Bruni already.

Twice in the past five days polls have shown that Sarko's ratings have gone negative for the first time since his election last May. More unexpected, a poll today found that François Fillon, his discreet Prime Minister, has overtaken him in popularity. After months of near invisibility while Super Sarko has run everything himself, the unassuming Fillon [pictured above] must be savouring his revenge against the Elysée Palace advisers who nicknamed him "Monsieur Nobody". Six months ago, riding high, Sarkozy dismissed the Prime Minister as a mere "assistant" in his administration.

French reverence for old lefties

I was amused by the coincidence of three news items that tell you about France's nostalgic fondness for old-style communism.   

Down in Montpellier, Georges Frêche, the local political baron, is trying to buy a seven-ton statue of Vladimir Lenin and put it in a prominent place in the Mediterranean city.

In Paris, the media are full of respectful, even affectionate, tributes to Pierre Lambert, an "historic" French Trotskyite leader who has just died.

Also in Paris, Danièlle Mitterrand, the 84-year-old widow of the late president, is about to sell at auction his clothes and souvenirs. A prime item is a bizarre bag made from a whole baby crocodile that was a gift from Fidel Castro. 

Frêche, who is president of the Languedoc Roussillon region and also of the Montpellier area council, wants to spend between 150,000 and 250,000 tax-payers' dollars on the  statue of the founding hero of the Soviet Union. He spotted the bronze likeness of the late dictator in a street in Seattle, Washington, on a recent visit (picture above).

"Lenin stands among the greatest men of the 20th century, in the same way as Mao Tse Tung or General de Gaulle," says Frêche, an old provocateur who was kicked out of the Socialist party last year for making racist remarks.

Sarkozy fans wedding mystery

Nicolas Sarkozy is having fun keeping France guessing about whether he has already married Carla Bruni. Since he indicated last Tuesday that he would marry the singer in secret, the internet and Paris newsrooms have been buzzing with rumours that the couple have tied the knot. 

News crews have been staking out Paris arrondissement mairies and also trying to confirm rumours that they were married in the Elysée Palace.

After the latest flurry was amplified by a regional newspaper yesterday, Sarko teased reporters who are travelling with him in the Gulf. Chatting in a hotel in Doha last night, orange juice in hand, he said: "Don't count on me to confirm or deny it. My reply is: No comment. When I have something to say, I'll say it. So stop poking into my private life." All noticed that he is not wearing a wedding ring.

French Culture Strikes Back

For a country whose culture has been proclaimed dead, France did not do badly in Hollywood's Golden Globes. The award for best foreign language movie went to The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le Papillon) and its réalisateur, Julian Schnabel, won best director. Marion Cotillard (picture above) won best actress in a musical for her role as Edith Piaf in La Môme (Released abroad as La Vie en Rose). Yes, Schnabel is a New Yorker, but the film, in French, has a cast of French stars and is based on a French best-seller.

This offers an occasion to update the polémique that followed Time magazine's obituary of Gallic creativity last month (The post here has drawn over 310 comments so far). Rather than treating Time's piece with lofty silence, official France has hit back, in the form of a broadside from CulturesFrance, the state agency responsible for conveying French civilisation to the world.

The boss of this organisation is Olivier Poivre d'Arvor, brother of PPDA, the subject of my last post. He was clearly stung by what he calls "a quite pleasant and highly stimulating hoax." He has written a clever, slightly sarcastic counter-attack which Time has published over four pages. 

Staff mock France's star news man

If you are interested in modern France it is impossible to avoid the phenomenon of PPDA. Patrick Poivre d'Arvor is the country's dominant newsman. For Americans, he would be Dan Rather and Peter Jennings rolled into one with a dash of Barbara Walters too. For 20 years PPDA's nightly 8pm news broadcast on TF1 has been the main source of news for millions of French, far ahead of France 2, the public network. "If it wasn't on TF1, it didn't happen," the bosses of TF1 like to say.

PPDA, a debonair, literary man with a voice that the comedians love to imitate, has weathered many a storm and shows little sign of nearing the end of his term as king of the news ratings.

The self-important anchorman is now in the midst of a new fuss with a book by five staffers on his team that skewers their news operation as incompetent and slavishly pro-Sarkozy and mocks PPDA as a lazy, tyrannical prima donna.

The chiefs of France's biggest television network are trying to identify the anonymous writers of "Madame, Monsieur, Bonsoir", which has turned into an instant best-seller. PPDA, 60, rules his 100-strong editorial staff like a dictator but routinely arrives up to an hour late for morning conferences, write the five, who use a collective pen-name Patrick Le Bel.

"He is irascible. Everyone is on the look-out for his rages. They are feared, destructive and wounding," they say.  No journalist dares contradict him or make a joke. When a young reporter asked for more air time with a story, he snapped: "Consider that on my news, just your voice behind pictures is already an immense privilege."

Poivre d'Arvor, who has presented the flagship news programme since 1987 and is also a best-selling writer, is vain, using his summer holidays for facelifts and to transplant more hair to remedy his baldness. PPDA is also jealous of Harry Roselmack, a young newsreader -- France's first black in the job -- who has enjoyed great success standing in for the star in the summer, the writers say..  The book also reports how PPDA likes to be given free holidays and entertainment by corporate sponsors. 

The writers' main theme is the well-known favourable news treatment given to Sarko and his administration by TF1,  whose main shareholder is Martin Bouygues, a close friend of the President and godfather to his son.

Sarkozy, the Cécilia version

Keeping up with the Sarko saga has become a full-time job this week, blotting out lesser events. With the dust settling after Tuesday's Elysée show, here's an update on the two strands, the high-minded and the soap opera, which gets more lurid by the day.

Sarkozy has made a bit of a fool of himself by claiming that he was misunderstood and back-tracking on some of his shock announcements, such as the end of the 35-hour work week. But first the soap opera, which is what the people want, according to Sarkozy. .

For yesterday's episode, in which Carla Bruni, his new paramour, has allegedly moved into the Elysée and upset the Prime Minister, read here. In today's episode, Cécilia, the ex-wife, has shot back onto the stage with a book in which she demolishes the head of state as a mean-spirited womanizer who has been behaving in a reckless and unseemly way since she left him in October.

"Nicolas est un sauteur ," Cécilia tells Anna Bitton, the author, a journalist on Le Point magazine who is, or more likely was, a close friend. "Nicolas is miserly... a man who loves no-one, not even his children...He has a ridiculous side. He is not worthy. He doesn't behave like the president of the republic. He has a real behaviour problem."
   
As I write, Cécilia's lawyers are in the Palais de Justice trying to get an order banning publication of Bitton's book, called Cécilia. But the extracts are out in news magazines and on the air and Bitton says she cannot understand why her friend suddenly wants it blocked. The last time that the former Mrs Sarkozy told her story to a journalist for a book, Sarko stepped in to halt publication. That was just after she returned to him in 2005 after her 10-month absence with Richard Attias, an events-organiser.

It's love, says Sarkozy

Nicolas Sarkozy was clearly enjoying himself when he held forth to us this morning in the regal surroundings of the Salle des Fêtes in the Elysée Palace. The occasion was his first grand news conference, a ritual invented by Charles de Gaulle in the early 1960s. If the shade of the austere old General was around the palace today, he would not have believed his ears.

Monsieur le Président was there under the chandeliers and gilded columns --   with his government and staff arrayed before him -- to review the state of the nation. He did that for most of the two-hour session, but he stopped the show with a review of his love life.  As expected, he could not resist confirming his romance with Carla Bruni, the supermodel who has swept him off his feet since late November. Marriage is in the air.

Read my report here and I'll add some thoughts. Sarko went public with his private life years ago, back when he showed off Cécilia and his family when he was Interior Minister. But for an old hand at Elysée conferences, it was extraordinary to hear the president chat about his girl friend on such a traditionally grand occasion. As Sarko said himself, it would have been unthinkable until now.

You may find him hard to take, but you have to admire Super-Sarko for his showmanship and powers of persuasion. Sometimes menacing, sometimes boyish and friendly, he has a way of boiling down argument to leave no room for disagreement.

Sarko junior the home boy

Just when I was enjoying a Sarko-free day, the French presidential family has produced another fun story. Pierre, the president's 22-year-old son, has teamed up with one of the country's baddest rap artists and provided a song for his latest album. 

Sarko junior, a university drop-out, is a budding hiphop producer-composer who calls himself Mosey. He has until now avoided the limelight. When he was running for office, Sarkozy persuaded "Mosey", the elder of the two sons with his Corsican first wife, to stop wearing dreadlocks. He has persisted in his musical career and recently started an outfit of his own, which he calls Crime Chantilly, a play on Crème Chantilly, or Whipped Cream.

On his Myspace page, he describes himself thus -- in English.

Hey I'm Mosey a young Parisian producer, with my crew: da Crime Chantilly we produced hip hop, soul and rnb beatz. -Credited on the dvd of Jamel Debouze "100%Debouze". -Produced the hiphop track "La rue" by Poison.

[Picture above with Timbaland, US rap producer]

Video on the road for French truck drivers

The next time you overtake a big truck on a French highway, try to see if the driver is watching television with his feet up on the dashboard.

As implausible as this sounds, some drivers of poids lourds (heavy trucks), are reported to be resorting to video and other pastimes to fight the boredom of life on the autoroute. The trick is "driving by ear", according to le Figaro, which published alarming reports from motorway maintenance workers yesterday.

When traffic is not too dense, the driver sets the cruise control at the regulation 90 kph limit and puts the truck's right wheels on the band that marks the edge of the inner lane. These are often ribbed, to make a noise and alert sleepy drivers that they are heading off the road. Le routier then steers by ear, keeping the sound of the band constant. He is free to put his feet up and watch a DVD, play a video-game or read a book. This might sound like urban legend or a media fantasy, but read on.

Sarkozy tells France a story

 

Sorry Frank, Valentin, Mads and others who think that there's too much Nicolas Sarkozy here. I can't resist posting this picture and citing some new insights into France's hyper-president.

The cover photo leads yet another Paris Match spread on Sarko's new love-life. The president is strolling in Egypt with his hand around Carla Bruni's midriff, above a glimpse of black underwear. "The lovers of the Nile. Kisses, laughs, tender gestures, the photo-album of their vacation," says the headline. The copy inside is grovelling gush about the super-statesman taking a well-deserved break.

Judging by the sales of Match and other media which are playing up the romance, the French have still not had enough of the Sarko show. But his exhibitionism is getting on the nerves of the opposition. François Hollande, the Socialist leader, has just defined the style with his usual wit. "Sarzkozyism is above all narcissism," said Hollande.

Thanks to a new book, we know that Sarkozy sees his highly orchestrated Egypian idyll as "telling France a story." The line comes from one of the fascinating scenes in Des Hommes d'Etat, an insider's account of Sarkozy's ruthless quest for power in the closing years of Jacques Chirac's administration.

Bruno Le Maire, the author, was chief of staff to Dominique de Villepin, the protegé whom Chirac appointed Prime Minister in 2005 in a last-ditch attempt to block Sarko's path to the Elysée Palace. Tom Cruise -- Villepin's nickname for his then Interior Minister -- believed that France did not care about a successful record. It wanted narrative. "You have to tell the French a story," Sarko lectured the newly-appointed Villepin. "What story are you going to tell them in July, in August, next year ?".

France stops smoking and Sarko carries on

The French New Year has kicked off with two implausible events. Smoking has been banned from cafes and restaurants and Nicolas Sarkozy has admitted that he has made mistakes.

Jogging past the local bistrot this morning (I had to get that in), I found a gaggle of bleary-eyed neighbours lighting up in the cold street. With disbelief, they told me that they had been asked to leave when they started their café-clope -- the ritual expresso and smoke that gets you going in the morning. The great smoking ban has finally taken effect and another Gallic institution has bitten the dust. Here's the rest on smoke-free France from today's paper.

Super-Sarko, back from his jaunt on the Nile with Carla Bruni, delivered his mea culpa in a New Year's address to the nation that was striking for its lack of innovation.  The reformer who promised "rupture" with the past and has transformed the presidency could have been any of his old predecessors, from Charles de Gaulle to Jacques Chirac, as he delivered the traditional pep talk to his subjects [watch video here].

The old presidents recorded their 8pm chats. Sarkozy may regret having decided to be the first to do it live because the Teleprompter was running too fast, forcing him to speed-read his words. But Sarko had clearly decided to restore a little gravitas after his Egyptian escapade. He eschewed the relaxed, crossed-legged, cool-guy pose of recent appearances and sat regally behind his desk in the Elysée Palace looking and sounding like a smaller version of Chirac.