Eight million viewers watched the coronation in Nice of the latest Miss France on Saturday night [video below]. That is a little less than usual, but it's still remarkable that 13 percent of the French population tunes in to watch young women parading in swimsuits and high heels and dancing in evening gowns for three hours as an oily host (Jean-Pierre Foucault) comments on their charms.
After controversy last time, the jury this year was relegated to the sidelines and a public vote decided the winner. They picked Miss Normandy, Malika Menard, 22, an undergraduate law student from Caen. Invited on the TF1 tv news yesterday, la nouvelle miss told the nation: "Being Miss France means giving love to people, happiness. I want to be a sympathique Miss." [The English word is used, not Mademoiselle]
How is it that Miss France is still a mainstream national institution when northwest Europe (Russia and east Europe are different) decided decades ago that beauty pageants were offensive and banished them to the margins? Yes, they are popular in Italy too, but France is part of the modern north for most purposes.
Part of the reason is nostalgia. Miss France symbolises a stable, rural golden age that figures in the collective imagination -- and which President Sarkozy sees as the key to French national identity. Miss France is supposed to carry French elegance to the four corners of the world but much of her job consists of travelling the country awarding prizes at agriculture shows and village fêtes.
The contestants are required to conform to the old virtues of modesty, chastity and decorum. No contestant may be married, have children or be living with a man. She must be of high morals and have no police record. The entertainment comes from the contrast between this kitsch, make-believe world and the tough, undemure organisation behind it. For years, we have watched a scandal-stained soap opera as Geneviève de Fontenay, the dragon-like President of the Miss France committee, has fought to keep her girls pure and her hands on the organisation.
The personality of Fontenay, 77, is a big part of the story. Born Geneviève Mulmann, "the lady in the hat" rules with an iron fist. She tried unsuccessfully to excommunicate Valérie Bègue, the 2008 Miss France, after a magazine published less-than-chaste pictures of her. A popular figure, Fontenay regularly deplores the decadence and moral collapse of modern France. She does not mince her words, drawing a contrast between her wholesome pageant and the sexual exhibitionism of the age. "I have never shown off my fesses (bottom) and I will never do so," she said recently. (Her contestants' swimsuit parades are presumably for showing off character). Last summer, she took a swipe at Carla Bruni over her celebrated former love life and changing politics. Bruni, she said "sleeps left at home and on the right at the Elysée Palace, and embodies a 180 degree turn from former first ladies."
In the Saturday extravaganza, Fontenay denounced "Secret Story", a popular TV reality show, as "trashissime" -- ultra-trashy, and warned the new Miss France to stay away from it. The show in question is produced by Endemol France -- the same company which now owns Miss France. Her tension with Endemol explains why Fontenay was only allowed brief remarks in the ceremony.
There is always a row. Today there are claims on the internet that the contest was loaded in favour of Miss Normandy, partly because she has an Arab first name. Fontenay said before the contest that she hoped that a woman of Arab background would win one day. Miss Menard is, it turns out, pure Norman. Her parents just liked the foreign name.
La nouvelle miss, who will represent France in the Miss World and Miss Universe contests, has big career ambitions. She dreams of one day becoming ... a journalist.
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.
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.
If you wanted to parody a Carla Bruni website it would be hard to do better than the real thing which has just opened. The new showcase for the chanteuse-supermodel looks like a caricature of the persona which President Sarkozy's image minders have shaped for the new première dame since their marriage early last year.
Opened yesterday to great fanfare, carlabrunisarkosy.org has been unable to keep up with demand. It froze for much of the day, but now works in sticky fashion.
In impeccable pastel tones, Bruni is cast as a caring, free-spirited but demure artiste and patroness of noble causes. Portraits of Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suukyi, the Burmese opposition leader, are among the heros in Carla's gallery. Her other acquaintances, such as the Obamas and Sarah Brown, the wife of the British Prime Minister, appear in rather odd line drawings. The home page is topped by an interview with Jean-Paul Gaultier, the fashion designer.
A gushing Paris Match-style biography notes that the single name Carla now suffices to identify the French first lady the world over.
"Born at the beginning of the women’s liberation movement, she questions the contradictions that afflict all self-assured people in this period," it says.(What does that that mean ? She lives with one of the world's most self-assured men). Then they drag in that good old tabloid invention, "a close friend", who notes: “She may not have been a suffragette or invented the miniskirt, but she is the very epitome of the modern woman in the way she approaches the world”,
The first lady's hectic first two years with the President are sketched thus:
What memories will France’s current First Lady take away with her? Her state visit to the UK making her title official? Her trip to Burkina Faso after taking up her functions as ambassador for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS? The shot fired just a few metres away at Tel-Aviv airport on leaving Israel? This exposure to the cameras in life and death situations is unavoidable for anyone who has to face history with a cool head and a smile on their lips.
The site -- much slicker than Ségolène Royal's disastrous new internet base -- is meant to publicise Bruni's charity work in France and her post as ambassador for the Geneva-based Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
It comes in French and English versions -- with a few adjustments in the translation. For example, Bruni was "born into a wealthy family of Italian industrialists" in the English one, but "into a rich family" in the French. Bruni's showbiz friends get a mention. There are links to Bob Dylan, Cindy Lauper and the Rolling Stones, to whose leader she was once especially close.
An "A to Z" of Carla mixes causes and first lady-like pursuits with some light nods to themes that have not helped her husband. For example, "Bling bling", the showy style which Sarkozy brought to the presidency, is dismissed as an invention of the media. It gets a mention above Sarah Brown, wife of Britain's Prime Minister.
The delicate, sugary site, with its emphasis on fashion and hip causes, fits the mission that the Elysée Palace has conferred on Bruni -- that of antidote to her brash, combative husband. Occasional web visitors may find it pleasant enough. The trouble is that bland corporate-style communication of this type does not work in a medium which prizes spontaneity and sharpness. Reaction on the French web to the Bruni site today has been contempt. "Nauseating...propaganda...they take us for fools..." was one of the more caustic lines.
Those wishing to visit Carla Bruni the singer can always go to her old site, carlabruni.com .
Super Sarko is also benefiting from a web remake. Under the direction of Nicolas Princen, its 25-year-old manager, the presidential site has loosened up a little. This week they are featuring a "making of" video from behind the scenes of a television interview with Sarkozy in New York last month. It neglected to include the scene in which Sarkozy tore a strip off Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, in front of the television crews. Sarkozy's official Facebook entry is being freshened and a Twitter account has been opened for the President's visit to the Copenhagen environment summit in December. Twittering is still not deemed presidential activity, so staff will be pecking out the copy.
Few nations have cultivated beauty and its attendant artifice as much as France. Now it could become the first country to impose health-warnings on all published photographs that have been retouched.
A parliamentarian from President Sarkozy's UMP party has tabled a bill that would require a "photo retouched" label on every improved picture that appears in advertising, the media or product-wrapping. Failure to signal Photoshopping or other enhancement would be punished with a 37,500 euro fine.
The idea is to end the "erroneous representation of the human body", says Valérie Boyer, an MP for the Marseilles area, who is behind the proposed law. The perfect images of women and also men in advertising and magazine portraits can drive people to despair and anorexia, says Boyer, who is a longtime campaigner in this field.
"These pictures can lead people to believe in realities which very often do not exist... There is a form of indecency in making people believe that only a certain category of humanity can attain perfection, without yellow teeth or love handles."
It's uncertain whether Boyer's bill, which has the signature of 50 other members, will reach a vote in parliament, but she has won applause from mental health advocates and drawn attention to the fact that most photographs -- except on news pages -- have been doctored. Celebrities expect electronic flattery whenever they sit for a picture. Elle Macpherson is said to travel with her own retouch artist.
The fashion world says that Boyer's law is laughable. Improving on nature has been part of the beauty business since time immemorial, they say. Michèle Fitoussi, a journalist on Elle magazine, joked on RTL radio: "While we're at it, why not write 'They have had their breasts redone and had a rib removed'."
France witnessed an egregious case this summer when Paris Match produced a feature on Sharon Stone. Under the headline "I'm 50 and so what!", the actress (who's actually 51) posed topless on the cover and across several pages, flaunting a flawless physique that a 20-year-old could barely dream of. The magazine cover, on all news stands in France, was pure provocation unless you knew that you were not looking at reality.
For men, the recent Vuitton adverts starring Sean Connery had a similar effect. It is very hard to believe that that is really the waistline of the 79-year-old former Bond.
Match was mocked a couple of years ago for tightening up Sarkozy's midriff in shots of the bare-topped President (This summer he did the job for the paparazzi by sucking in his stomach when they showed up).
Retouching of course remains taboo in the serious news business. There have been scandals when the rules have been broken. Photographers have been dismissed from news agencies for giving a little electronic tweak to shots of war and disasters. But given the ease of electronic fiddling I wonder how long the news industry can resist the temptation.
Below: a video which shows the wizardry of today's glamour trade
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Here we go with a summer episode in the saga of France versus Muslim dress. This one involves a 35-year-old French convert to Islam called Carole who was thrown out of a suburban swimming pool for wearing the head-to-toe swimsuit known as the "burkini".
Carole was on her third burkini outing to the town pool at Emerainville, in the eastern outskirts, when the chief lifeguard ordered her to leave. She was said to be breaking hygiene rules but everyone is casting the incident as another clash between fundamentalist Muslims and a state that has banned head-cover from schools and wants to curb face-covering.
Carole accused the pool of illegal discrimination and went straight to the police and the media. "Quite simply, this is segregation," she said. "I will fight to try to change things. And if I see that the battle is lost, I cannot rule out leaving France," she said [To watch her explanation, click on video picture here].
The police refused to accept the complaint on the grounds that the lifeguard was just enforcing the rules that apply in all French public pools. Women must wear swimsuits and men must wear brief trunks -- Speedos -- rather than shorts, which are said to be more likely to harbour bacteria. (American men are always uncomfortable with this longstanding regulation).
Carole, who was born in a traditional French family and converted to Islam at 17, said she had bought her attire on holiday in Dubai. The burkini, designed by Aheda Zanetti, a Lebanese-Australian, has lately become a hit in the Gulf and caused trouble in public pools in Europe and North America.
Despite the allusion to the Afghan burqa, with its mask, the swimsuit leaves the face uncovered. The body is clad in a track-suit-like tunic and coat and the head and neck are covered in a hijab in the form of a diver's helmet. "I thought that it could enable me to enjoy the pleasure of bathing without uncovering myself, as Islam recommends," she told le Parisien. "I just wanted to be able to swim in the pool with my children. I understand that it might shock people, but I am annoyed because I have been told that it is a political matter."
She also made the point that her outfit was no different from the Olympic swimmers who wear the new wrist-to-ankle slick suits. Pool officials say these are not allowed either.
The local authorities say no politics were involved. "The lady was almost fully dressed," Daniel Guillaume, head of local sports facilities, said on France-Inter radio today. "You wear a bathing suit and take a shower before entering the water."
Carole's incident was certainly viewed as political by the lawmakers who want new measures against face-covering by Muslim women and demands for gender-segregated sessions at pools and other sports facilities.
"Maybe you can see the woman's face in this ridiculous swim-suit, but it is obviously a provocation by a militant," said André Gerin, a Communist MP from the Rhone area. "These women wearing their camisoles in public want to mark their difference... Going straight to the police station is clear proof that there is a political project behind this outfit."
Gerin heads a 32-member parliamentary enquiry that opened last month amid great publicity to review ways of dealing with Muslim women who wear the face-covering burka or niqab in public. President Sarkozy stirred fundamentalist anger when he sided with the review, saying that such dress was not a symbol of faith but a sign of women's subservience and that it had "no place in France".
This drew the expected response from the extremists. "Yesterday it was the hijab and today, it is the niqab," said Abu Musab Abdul Wadud, leader of "Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb" -- north Africa. "We will take revenge for the honour of our daughters and sisters against France and against its interests by every means at our disposal." That rather reinforced the French point that the body-covering dress is a male-enforced symbol of oppression.
The burkini has been making news around the world. Last year a Dutch swimming pool banned it on hygiene grounds, but it was accepted after intervention by the government. In Calgary, Canada, they approved the burkini and other long swimming gear, but only in the shallow end to ensure that it does not catch in vents.
France's mainstream Muslim leaders have not yet made any comment on the affair.
The Paris Plage people knew what they were doing when they put that retro bathing-beauty on this year's beach poster. Body-covering, single-piece swimsuits are indeed the fashion, but for want of real news, le Parisien decided to fill a page yesterday under the headline: "Le monokini, c'est fini!."
Le Parisien's story was over a decade out of date, but that did not prevent foreign media from lifting it as a suitable silly season item. Topless bathing in reality ceased to be fashionable well before the fin of the last siècle and for years few young women have been venturing onto a beach in just their bikini bottom -- like their mothers did and sometimes still do. A sunbather called Nathalie at Bornes-les-Mimosas, a very touristy spot on the Mediterranean, knowledgably informed le Parisien that only two percent of women now went topless there.
A tiny band of feminists still campaigns for the right to go topless in city pools but their cause seems more like 1970s-80s nostalgia. They are competing with Muslim campaigners demanding women's only swimming sessions. Most topless beach-goers nowadays are their 40s, 50s and 60s. An Ifop poll on nudity last April found that French women between 50 and 64 were by far the least pudique -- modest -- about their bodies (The survey was commissioned by Tena, a company that makes products for urinary incontinence.)
The topless phenomenon, which France pioneered in the late 1960s, was always about female equality and women's freedom to be natural. The fashion was bitterly resisted at first by the guardians of morality. There is an amusing account of the period in a new history of France's bathing culture by Christophe Granger, a sociologist.
Newspaper editorialists said children were shocked by naked breasts. "People were hostile and treated the monokini bathers as prostitutes while their advocates called the critics prudes...After a decade of discord, L'Express Magazine closed the debate [in the late 1970s] with a definitive survey under the headline: "Naked breasts: the French are for them!" Granger says.
Granger's book, Les Corps d'Ete, is largely about the furious fight in the 1920s and 30s between the authorities and bathers over the right to show their bare limbs at all. "The old Christian bouregoisie led a moral crusade against these new summer practices. The conflicts were sometimes very violent, with the beating and stoning of women bathers. They accused them of holding public orgies" he says.
I suspect that many women were never comfortable with the topless fashion even though they practised it. As a man, I always found it unnerving. The pretense was that the monokini was not a sexual display. You were supposed to act as thought you didn't notice that the mother of your son's friend, with whom you usually shook hands politely at the school gate, just happened to be naked from the waist up (to mention an episode I remember from the 1990s).
Jean-Claude Kauffman, a sociologist, defined this the other day: "The male on the beach was required to have a completely blank expression, a display of lack of interest, navigating around the beachscape without avoiding the naked breasts nor staring at them."
The demise of the monokini fashion was put down to a return to modesty. I'd say it was more a return to common sense.
It's almost Bastille day and Paris has started the holiday shutdown so it's a good time for a few tips on being cool in the French capital this summer.
The style of the season is called nouveau modeste
Le look for women: retro and slightly ethnic. The Sarouel (left picture) is tendance again this year, along with white everything and creole loop earrings. Footwear: espadrilles Castaner [below]. My teenage daughter and her western Paris friends also carry big hand-bags permanently on the crook of their elbows [picture: Parisienne teen look]
Sunglasses (men and women). Persol only. Classic Italian marque long ago adopted by French. Never, of course, to be perched on top of the head
 
Men: Anything as long as it does not include any of the following offences: sneakers/trainers, sandals, shorts, trousers with big appliqué pockets, t-shirts with logos or slogans, back-packs, shoulder bags, or, heaven forbid, man capris [criminal offender on Champs Elysées in picture below]. Simple rule: Paris is an elegant northern city not a Med package resort 
Dog: English bulldog, known as le bouledogue anglais. The Jack Russell terrier is ending its reign as favoured four-legged accessory. 
Car: Toyota IQ. Replaced the Smart as chic Paris wheels. Do not be seen near any 4x4 (SUV).
Parking: give your keys to one of the hundreds of voituriers (valet parking attendants) who have multiplied around hip cafes and restaurants. You don't have to be a customer, just tip well.
Top transport: bicycle. Le Vélib, the city's self-service bikes are great but very 2007. An electric Solex is chic but a fixie [below] is better. The fixed-gear bicyclette is now fashionable even for women.
Public transport: The municipal autobus is to be preferred to the smelly Métro, especially in light summer traffic. It's a more pleasant conveyance and you see the city.
Films: Any with late comedy stars Louis de Funès, Jacques Tati or Bourvil [Picture: de Funès and Bourvil in le Corniaud] 
Places to be seen: La Réserve (rare book collection) at the Bibliothèque Nationale. The terrace of Le Café de l'Alma on the avenue de la Bourdonnais [those two cited as top snob spots in Figaroscope] Sunday brunch at the Neuilly-sur-Seine market.
Places not to be seen: The Champs Elysées, the Eiffel tower, the Fifth arrondissement, Paris Plage or anywhere along the central Seine banks. Any cafés and brasseries that display English-language menus or claim to have English-speaking waiters.
Where Parisians holiday this year: Inland rural regions like Picardy, Lorraine, Ardèche and the Cévennes. Provence and the Mediterranean coast are to be avoided like la peste.
Parisian pastimes on holiday: Fishing, bicycling, jeux de société (board games), listening to vinyl records, barbecue.
France has a rich tradition of dictionaries and encyclopedias and the publishers are not giving up in the face of the competition from the internet. Tomorrow sees the publication of the latest Petit Larousse, a dictionary-reference book which has been part of French family life since Pierre Larousse invented it in 1905.
The Petit Larousse is serious and known for its fine illustrations but it is not set in stone like the dictionary of the august Académie Française, the official guardian of the language. It keeps pace with trends and mirrors the prevailing culture. So it's always interesting to note the new expressions and the people whom it adds to its new editions. The arrivals this year include Audrey Tautou, Barack Obama and George Clooney.
The inclusion of show-biz personalities is part of "la pipolisation" of French life. That word, which means celebrity culture and originated in the 1990s from the US People magazine, is one of 150 new terms in the Larousse dictionary section. There are a few from Belgium, Quebec and other parts, and some, like barré (crazy, eccentric) are current French slang but many, inevitably, have been adopted from American
They include buzz, burn-out, geek, fantasy (in the sense of Tolkien-style, nordic mythology entertainment), peer-to-peer, caster (meaning to cast in the theatre sense), blacklister (to blacklist), clubbeur/clubbeuse and toxique, in the sense of waste or loans. The new toxique is one of many examples of English usage being overlaid on old French words. A typical classic example is réaliser, which took on the English sense of to realize as well as its French meaning of to carry out. (The shift took place in the 1920s, according learned commentators below)
This may drop out of the language as fashion passes. Larousse is not sanctifying language like the Académie, whose dictionary is a safe half century or so behind the times. It just tries to reflect current use.
You can understand why French embraces American jargon when it encapsulates a sense for which nothing native has been invented. English has done that with dozens of French words (chic, chagrin, nuance, frisson...) over the past couple of centuries. Le buzz sounds ugly in French but it is a single syllable which French takes a mouthful to render as "rumeur, retentissement médiatique, notamment autour de ce qui est perçu comme étant à la pointe de la mode" as Larousse puts it.
But a lot of the English borrowing is superfluous or silly. Gilles Vigneault, a venerable Quebec singer-poet, was making the point on Europe1 radio this morning. Why say burn-out when there is a perfectly good French word for it, épuisement (exhaustion), he said. My list of recent silly franglais would include relooker (to make over), le fooding (a restaurant fashion involving modern cuisine and trendy décor) and sur-booké (booked out). All have been registered by Larousse.
To get back to less topical matters, this edition marks the 120th anniversary of La Semeuse (the sower), the illustration of a woman blowing dandelion seeds in the wind, which Larousse adopted for his publishing house in 1890 [Dandelion, an English borrowing from the French dent-de-lion, or lion's tooth]. And here is one of the famous nature illustrations: from le Petit Larousse.
Here's an item that is more gossip than news. Carla Bruni and her husband are house-hunting and they have taken a tour of the celebrated apartment of the late Yves Saint Laurent on the rue Babylone in the 7th arrondissement on the Left Bank. What makes it piquant is that Mick Jagger, Bruni's old flame, owns a flat in the same building.
Bruni is an heiress and former supermodel who is worth about 20 million euros, according to the popular estimate. Sarkozy has much less. It seems unlikely, though, that he would move into such a sumptuous pad when he is trying to shed his bling-bling image. But they did inspect the premises recently as part of their search for a new abode, an informed friend tells me.
The Rolling Stones singer has a flat two floors up from Saint Laurent's vast garden duplex, refurbished in Art Deco style, which was home to the spectacular art trove which he collected with Pierre Bergé, his partner. The works were sold for 373 million euros at auction in February [picture above before the sale]. The apartment is not officially on the market yet, but it is estimated at up to 10 million euros.
The couple have been looking for lodgings more suitable than the town house that Bruni rents in the Villa Montmorency, an ultra-chic private street in the 16th arrondissement. Sarkozy moved in there after their marriage 15 months ago. Neighbours in the millionaires' ghetto off the Avenue Mozart are displeased by the security personnel and official vehicles which have disturb their quiet existence around the clock.
The couple are reported over the past month to have inspected other properties, including a former Carmelite monastery nearby in the 16th. The YSL flat would suit Sarkozy better because it is in an open street in the 7th district which is home to Parliament and ministries and is just across the Seine from to the palace.
The Saint Laurent apartment would have special appeal to Bruni because she was a friend and one of the couturier's favourite models. On his death last year the new Première Dame de France said that he had "made sublime not just the beauty but also the strength of women."
On his election in 2007, Sarkozy declared assets of 2.153 million euros, but he lost a big chunk of that in his divorce settlement with Cécilia Ciganer, who left him for another man six months after his election. Sarkozy and Bruni signed a wedding contract under which each retained the title to their their existing assets while sharing those acquired after their marriage.
According to various memoirs of the time, the young Bruni enjoyed a lengthy liaison with Jagger from the early 1990s when he was married to Jerry Hall. The couple have kept in touch. Sir Mick has attended Bruni's concerts and Franck Demules, her personal assistant, wrote in a biography published last week that the British singer occupies the rank of "God" in her list of friends.
Jagger figured in Bruni's opening flirt with Sarkozy when whey were introduced for the first time at the house of Jacques Séguéla, a mutual friend, in November 2007. According to the account by Séguéla, a veteran advertising man, Bruni taunted Sarko, saying: “When it comes to the celebrity press, you are an amateur. My time with Mick was secret for eight years. We went to all the world capitals and we were never photographed once." The President riposted with the now immortal line: "How could you have stayed eight years with a man who has such ridiculous legs?"
[below: the presidential couple in the Elysée palace posing for Vanity Fair magazine last year]
The personal drivers of the past two French Presidents have caused a stir in recent years with indiscreet memoirs that reported on their master's lurid private lives. The latest exercise in the drive-and-tell genre is by Carla Bruni's chauffeur-assistant.
But Franck Demules, known as Franky, offers a reversal of the usual sensation. While the civil servant chauffeurs of Presidents Miterrand and Chirac spilled the beans on their bosses' amorous antics, Demules describes life in the showbiz world of sex, drugs and rock n'roll while making France's première dame sound like a saint.
Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, both former lovers, feature among the stars in the biography of Demules, who has worked for the past decade as confidant, driver, personal assistant and fixer for Bruni. In Un Petit Tour en Enfer (A Little Trip in Hell) Demules, 43, a former actor and cocaine addict who spent time in prison for fraud, reveals no secrets but he offers a glimpse of life in a world far removed from the decorum of the Elysée palace. Bruni and Sarkozy, whom she met and married over the winter of 2007-8, emerge as saviours of the man who describes himself as "the queen's devoted musketeer".
Sarkozy called in Demules when he returned from a rehabilitation course in Canada last February and "in a kind way told me to think of the future." The President advised him to throw himself into work: "If you knew, Franck, how much effort I had to put in in order to get here," said Sarkozy.
Demules returned to the bottle and suffered depression last year after Bruni's marriage sidelined him as her minder-in-chief. Bruni signed him into a clinic near Paris on the recommendation of her friend Marianne Faithful, the British singer. She then proposed a New Year's stay in "her friend Eric Clapton's (rehab) centre in the Caribbean." His English was not good enough so he went to Quebec.
Demules, the victim of long-term sexual abuse as a child, describes how Carla and Valéeria, her actress sister, gave him lodging and work in the mid-1990s after his young wife had died of Aids. Soon Bruni had entrusted him with her credit card and her secrets, he writes. Among other things, the Brunis paid for the schooling of his daughter, now 19 and Carla helped him overcome drug and alcohol addiction.
Demules writes with affection for Raphael Enthoven, the philosopher who was Bruni's last partner and father of their son. He describes Endhoven's "ballsy" courage in a brawl which they had with two strangers in an underground car park. Bruni's entourage has a list of friends classed by order of importance. "Mick Jagger is God," says Demules. The chief Rolling Stone behaves like a perfect gentleman at Bruni's concerts, he says. He contrasts him with Karl Lagerfeld, the Chanel designer, who sweeps up with an entourage and demands movie-star treatment.
Serving Bruni has its tough moments, he says. One was taking Naomi Campbell shopping. On a visit to Au Bon Marché, the Left Bank department store, the former supermodel was so fierce that no-one dared talk to her, he writes.
Demules describes the shock and disapproval among friends in the leftwing entourage when Bruni began her romance with France's defiantly rightwing president. "It was violent. You would have thought I was a traitor to the cause," he writes. Since then, former anti-Sarkozy members of the circle have been asking him to intervene for presidential favours.
Franky organised the President's first birthday party after his marriage. He says that he still feels uncomfortable working with the presidential body guards, all police officers. "At the beginning it stressed me. Even if you have nothing to feel guilty about, you are always a bit scared that you might have forgotten something," he writes.
Demules realised that his boss and the President were in love when he dropped her off in the rain at the Elysée one rainy afternoon in the zinter last year. The President telephoned him and invited him to drive in with his battered car and dog. "I was impressed. The president received me divinely, offering me sausage that he had brought back from Corsica."
Bruni has redeemed him, writes Demules. "Without Carla, some people would not have talked to me. I would have stayed the former junky whose wife died of Aids, the crazy, uncontrollable guy."
Bruni has given her blessing to the book, but warned him "they'll try to make it about me, but don't be pushed around." The premiere dame talked in the latest Paris Match about her attachment to her Franky. "When I got married I never imagined for a second that I would let him go. Even if I am now very protected, there is a heap of personal and intimate things that I do not dare ask of the palace personnel or the security officers."
 After Audrey Tautou's appointment as the new face of Chanel, Dior have come up with a new male ambassador. He's the one in the picture, a 31-year-old actor who is known as sublimely handsome. Younger readers, don't worry if you've never heard of Alain Delon (like some of my colleagues in London today). The picture of him posing in Saint Tropez was taken in 1966.
Dior are about to use the image of the moody Delon at the height of his seductive power to sell Eau Sauvage, the men's cologne which it launched that year. "The picture has not aged and it will enable us to reach men who remember Delon at that period and a younger clientèle which will be charmed by his rebel, irrevent look," Dior told le Figaro.
Delon, a monstre sacré who is in his 74th year; is still going strong after 88 films. He made fun of his notorious self-importance a couple of years ago playing Julius Caesar in the mega-euro comedy Astérix and the Olympic Games. He replied in the film to "Hail Caesar" with the salute: "Avé moi!" [picture]
Known for this mégalo character, Delon likes referring to himself in the third person. He cried scandal last year when he dropped out of the Journal du Dimanche ranking of the 50 most admired French people. The pollsters had failed to include him in the list of candidates, he said. "There were names there that should not have been there if Delon was not there."
Dior's photo; taken by Jean-Marie Périer, is meant to evoke the golden days when Delon largely played himself starring as the smouldering, dangerous hero in movies by René Clément, Luchino Visconti (The Leopard, 1963), Michelangelo Antonioni, Jacques Deray, Henri Verneuil and other directors. He was romantically involved with a string of beautiful actresses, including Jane Fonda, Romy Schneider, Monica Vitti and Mireille Darc. Always a star more than an actor, he missed out on the nouvelle vague film movement of the early 1960s. In 1966, when the photo was taken, he was co-starring with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Charles Boyer and Leslie Caron in Clement's wartime classic Is Paris Burning?
Unlike other actors whose style moved with the times as they aged, Delon seems to have stayed in those pre-1968 years when, as a global hearthrob, he stood for Gallic insouciance, dash and danger. The nostalgia picture will work in France, but I wonder how it will play in the world beyond.
[Picture: Delon now]
Get ready for a deluge of Chanel. In an astute bit of marketing, the Paris fashion and perfume company is about to relaunch its No.5 scent with a new muse: Audrey Tautou.
The actress with the girl-next-door looks replaces Nicole Kidman, who has been Chanel's ambassador-model since 2004. There have been only four or five such égéries, or muses, since 1921 when Coco Chanel invented the heady scent that became the world's best-seller. Marilyn Monroe [below], the first after Chanel herself, ensured its fortunes in the United States in 1954 when she was asked what she wore in bed: "Why, Chanel No.5, of course."
Tautou's role as Amélie (In France known as Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain) in 2001 made her the world's most famous young French actress. Chanel's move is clever because Tautou is about to star as the company's founder and the perfume's inventor in a would-be block-buster film which opens this week.
Coco Avant Chanel, directed by Anne Fontaine, is the most lavish among recent films and mini-series on the woman who was fashion's version of Picasso or Stravinsky. The new movie focuses on the young Gabrielle Chanel [Top picture]. It is the latest in a trail of French biopics trying to match La Môme, the Edith Piaf film that won last year's best actress Oscar for Marion Cotillard. [Coco trailer here]
Chanel hired Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who directed Tautou in Amélie and Un long Dimanche de Fiançailles, to shoot a commercial. Ridley Scott, Luc Besson and Baz Luhrmann did the same for previous Chanel muses.
[Kidman]
Jeunet said Chanel's brief consisted of only three words: mystère, frisson, émotion. He scripted a sepia-tinted, atmospheric yarn about an encounter between travelling strangers. From those words you know that we are talking about the Orient Express or an ocean steamer. For Jeunet it was the Express. He filmed for three weeks with a crew of 250 on locations from Paris to Istanbul. Luxury goods, it seems, cannot get enough of steam(y) romance. Only last year Catherine Deneuve perched on a suitcase beside the same train for Louis Vuitton.
In the Jeunet advert, a whiff of Chanel 5 enables Travis Davenport, an an American model, to find the mysterious reporter (Tautou) who was on the express to Istanbul. The couple finally embrace to the strains of Billy Holiday's I'm a Fool to Want You. The idea of tracing a woman by scent is apt for Chanel No.5 because it was one of the first "parfums à sillage", perfumes that leave a wake. Unlike the floral-based scents of the time, Chanel's product contained chemical aldehydes that gave the jasmin-based essence its lingering effect. Only three people know the formula, according to Chanel.
[Bouquet]
Both Fontaine and Jeunet have been saying that Tautou is the very incarnation of Mademoislle Chanel and the actress agrees. She told L'Express this week that she had always identified with the pioneering couturière. They had similar rural backgrounds and physique. Chanel believed in independence for women, said Tautou. "That's a view that I share."
In the trade, they say that Chanel has made a smart move cashing on the big movie and using a star whose approachable style will attract younger women to its venerable scent. The Coco film opens in France on Wednesday and the commercial airs on May 5. And note: I managed to write the above without using the icon word.
![Bronzes_chinois[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e20112790e45ab28a4-400wi)
France often quotes a 1995 pop song by Alain Bashung called Ma petite entreprise ne connais pas la crise -- The crisis isn't touching my little business.
The title could be sung by the art market today after the spectacular sale of theYves Saint Laurent-Pierre Bergé collection. The three-day auction at the Grand Palais has defied the economic gloom and brought in 373 million euros, breaking several world records.
The song does not apply to the petite entreprise of Franco-Chinese relations. Beijing is using the sale of those two little Chinese animal heads to further its punishment of President Sarkozy for his antics last year around Tibet and the Beijing Olympics. The hare and the rat, stolen when the British and French sacked Beijing in 1860, went for 14 million euros each to anonymous bidders despite China's attempts to block the sale. Jackie Chan, the Kung Fu actor, jumped in on Beijing's side today. Here is my story.
Back to the rest of the art. The sight of all those bidders flush with their millions has not cheered France much as the bleak times hit home but it is being greeted as as a triumph by Sarkozy's government. Christine Albanel, the Culture Minister, called the auction in the Grand Palais a "a world success which shows that Paris is one of the major centres for the international art market."
In a market that is apparently withstanding the slump, you would expect works by Matisse, de Chirico and Degas to notch up records. For example, Matisse's 1911 oil "Les coucous, tapis bleu et rose" [right], fetched 32 million euros, the sale's highest price and a record for the painter whose collages inspired Saint Laurent's designs.
![YSL-fauteuil-dragon_large[1]](http://timescorrespondents.typepad.com/.a/6a00d83451d14e69e20112790e83fe28a4-300wi)
But how about this elephant-like arm-chair from the early 20th century Art Deco era? The squat, very worn, brown leather seat by the Irish designer Eileen Gray sold for 21.9 million euros. Souren Melikian, the veteran expert at the International Herald Tribune, said today that this was "a price that was until now utterly unimaginable for any piece of Art Deco furniture."
Crisis or no crisis, the Paris auction had shown that there had been no change since the days of bubbling optimism, he said. "The prodigious vitality of the art market across the board cannot be doubted for a second. If the goods are there, the prices rise higher than ever before."
To close, we can admire this piece by Constantin Brancusi, the Romanian sculptor. It was made from stacked wood blocks between 1914-1917 and entitled "Madame L.R.". It sold for 26 million euros -- 33 million US dollars.
The end is nigh for Rachida Dati, the troublesome glamour figure of the French government. For months, Dati, 43, the symbol of ethnic diversity in President Sarkozy's cabinet, has been clinging on to her job as Justice Minister in the face of a revolt by the judges under her command.
Two weeks ago, the birth of a baby and her return to work five days later seemed to have won a reprieve for the former presidential favourite (see below for the latest on the paternity mystery). But last night she agreed under Sarkozy's pressure to run for next June's elections to European Parliament.
As second place on the Paris region list of Sarkozy's UMP party, Dati will be guaranteed a seat. This will offer an elegant exit for the furiously ambitious, politically inept emblem of Sarkozy's promotion of non-white personnel. According to Le Figaro, Dati will wait until the election before resigning. Sarkozy has also guaranteed her a senior role in the party, it said.
Dati refused to say anything about her future today but Sarkozy made clear that she is on the way out. He will need a more consensual figure in charge of Justice to handle the resistance from the judiciary when he applies his promise to abolish the institution of investigating judge later this year.
Dati had hoped that she could follow French precedent and stay on in the government after winning a Euro-Parliament seat. The young Sarkozy once did that.However Sarko said this afternoon that he expects all his party's candidates to take up the seats they win.
A mixture of Cinderella and Cruella de Vil, Dati has both fascinated and irritated with her abrasive ways, good looks, sexy outfits and indifference to the conventions of the ruling elite. As we've seen here before, she was protected because she was the creation of Sarkozy until she fell out of favour. Her return to the ministry days after a Caesarian delivery was an act of devotion and desperation. It also deepened her unpopularity. Last week, before turning the ministry dining room into a nursery for Zohra, her baby, she announced that Sarko had assured her that she was keeping her job for 2009. That seems to have been an illustration of a cynical saying among French politicians that "promises commit only those who receive them." [Les promesses n'engagent que ceux qui les reçoivent]
For all her antipathique side, Dati, the daughter of Moroccan and Algerian working class parents, draws sympathy as a rather lonely figure. Sheer persistence took her from obscurity to a very senior government post despite her lack of political experience and minimal professional qualification. Marianne, a very Sarkophobic news weekly, painted a bitter-sweet portrait of her this week under the headline: "Rachida Dati: Why women hate her." The answer was that "She embodies at the same time the image of the superwoman and the archetype of the woman who has put her fate in the hands of one man...The king made her and he can unmake her." That's pretty accurate.
The mystery persists over Zohra's father. The names of several business tycoons are still doing the rounds, as is that of José-Maria Aznar, the former Spanish Prime Minister [below]. Aznar issued a denial months ago. On a visit to Paris today, he was tackled on the subject by Europe 1 radio.
"This is a libel," he said. "This question does not exist. It has never existed." He is taking legal action against people spreading the rumour he added.
Meanwhile, Dati's baby has become a running gag for Nicolas Canteloup, the political impersonator who has a popular morning slot on Europe 1. On Monday, he reported that Zohra Dati had resigned from her post as minister's daughter, becoming the 12th member of the entourage of the impossible Madame Dati to give notice this year.
 Here's a picture of a courageous super-woman. No, it's not. It shows a bad mother and disgrace to the feminist cause. The argument has been raging since the unexpected return to work of Rachida Dati, the French Justice Minister. Only five days earlier, she gave birth to her first baby -- by caesarean section. The father's identity remains a state secret. More on that below
Dati, 43, the glamour-figure of President Sarkozy's government, left her clinic in the 16th arrondissement yesterday morning. In freezing weather, the single mother showed Zohra, her baby, to admirers (picture below). An hour later, she turned up looking trim in stiletto heels and a tight suit for the weekly cabinet session. Sarko opened by contratulating "la jeune maman" -- the young mummy.
The very image-conscious Dati was pulling off one her stunts. Her decision to forego the standard three-month maternity leave was ridiculed by those who see her as a pushy, over-promoted favourite of the President. Her admirers saw her return as typical of the pluck that took her from a childhood on the immigrant housing estates to one of the highest government posts.
Everyone understood that Dati, who is deemed to be a disastrous minister, was desperate to keep her job and be there when Sarkozy announced his radical plan to abolish the institution of investigating judges (last post). The argument is whether she has set a bad example for women and is neglecting her daughter.
In the media, blogs and internet forums, the criticism is outweighing the approval. "Dati is doing a disservice to the women's cause," Sophie de Menthon, a feminist businesswoman, told Metro newspaper. "She is driving herself to a point that women who have children know is superhuman. Instinctively and not rationally, I abhor this."
Claude Askolovitch, Editor of the Journal du Dimanche, tore into Dati in his daily breakfast commenatary on Europe 1 radio. She was betraying the women who had fought for their rights by giving the impression that maternity leave is a luxury option, he said. It had been a mistake to see Dati as an icon of ethnic diversity because her case was unique. "She is a solitary character.. and even in happiness, she often inspires a little sadness."
Catherine Nay, a veteran journalist who wrote the authoritative biography on Sarkozy, said Dati was making a mistake because she was stirring up yet another row over her behaviour. "There is in her action an excessive determination to stay in power... It is not clear that being modern means being rushed and reckless," said Nay.
Luc Chatel, the minister who acts as government spokesman, defended Dati. "Rachida has always said that to be a mother was the greatest of happinesses, but at the same time that she had important duties that she would continue to fulfill," he said.
Everyone is bored with the Dati soap opera -- or so we are supposed to believe. A poll on the media in La Croix newspaper today ranked her as one of the subjects which the public believes is over-reported. Yet the internet is full of Dati and she repeatedly scores as a profitable cover story for magazines -- both news and celebrity. So a lot of people are intrigued by her.
It's obvious that the Dati saga has a lot of good old-fashioned ingredients: power, sex and rags-to-riches. Dati is a Cinderella who was elevated from obscurity as the prince's favourite and became a force in her own right. (She talked her way into Sarkozy's staff when he was Interior Minister and she was serving as a junior investigating judge in the suburbs.)
She has flouted decorum -- indulging a taste for showing off in luxury brands and posing for fashion shoots at the same time as imposing Sarko's harsh new sentencing rules and a painful overhaul of the justice system. She is deeply unpopular among her judges and civil servants whom she commands. For a while she was Sarko's social escort. Now he is said to regard her as incompetent but is unable to bring himself to remove her, if only because she is such a symbol. After having the baby and loyally come back to work, she is almost unsackable.
On the matter of le père, the media have been mainly silent this week, while the internet has been full of a picture of François Sarkozy, the President's younger brother. He visited Dati in the maternity clinic over the weekend. Today, Paris Match magazine confirmed that Dati had spent Christmas eve at the home of Andrée Sarkozy, the President's mother. It also published a picture of Madame Sarkozy visiting Dati's clinic. No further explanation was given.
The names of other possible fathers are still circulating. José-Maria Aznar, the former Spanish Prime Minister, is first among them despite his public denials last autumn. Then there is a suggestion that Dati, who was very keen to have a first child and in her 43rd year, simply chose an anonymous donor.
Until lately, France's luxury brands were claiming relative immunity from the slump that has hit purveyors of more common goods. Demand for the high end was holding up, driven by the nouveaux riches of Russia, China and other emerging powers, they said.
The denial has faded over the past month, as the now suffering Russians and Asians have stayed away from the boutiques of the Paris Golden triangle and from the luxury districts of London and New York. French luxury business in Japan has positively slumped.
LVMH, the biggest luxe conglomerate, has just cancelled a plan for a huge Louis Vuitton megastore in Tokyo's Ginza district. Profits in the 170 billion euro world luxury market are still expected to be substantial this year but LVMH has lost 44 percent of its share value in 2008. Richemont, the Swiss owner of Cartier and Montblanc, has suffered a similar share slide.
The latest signs of trouble have come from Chanel, one of the grandest of fashion names. A week ago, the firm, which is privately owned and secretive about its affairs, called off a glitzy travelling art show as it was about to arrive in London from New York. Now we hear that Chanel is to lay off 200 of its French staff.
Over the weekend, the house unions reported that the firm is dismissing all of its 200 personnel who are on fixed-term or temporary work contracts. Sixteen of them work in the firm's historic home in the rue Cambon where the late Coco Chanel dreamt up her little black dresses and No 5 perfume in the 1920s. The company employs 16,000 worldwide. "In the little world of luxury goods, the news has had the impact of a bombshell," said le Parisien.
By coincidence, French television is tonight showing the first part of an Italian-American miniseries on the life of the pioneering Paris couturière. Shirley MacLaine plays the older Chanel. Coco Chanel is suddenly movie material. Two other new biopics -- one starring Audrey Tatou -- are to reach cinemas in coming months. [picture Audrey Tautou in forthcoming Coco before Chanel]
The trouble at Chanel is mirrored across a French-led luxury industry which enjoyed an historic boom with sales growth of about 10 percent a year since 2003. The experts are predicting about a four percent decline in sales in 2009. Not everyone is suffering to the same degree. Swiss watchmakers have been hardest hit while Hermès, the Paris leather goods and silk-square firm, has seen its share price rise by nearly 16 percent this year and it expects about a 10 percent sales growth.
Most of the leaders of les marques de grand luxe say that they are sanguine about what they hope will be a soft landing. But some in the trade believe that times will be hard after a decade in which greed and easy money led to hubris. That's the view of Alain Nemarq, Chairman of Mauboussin, a Place Vendôme jewellery firm which has taken the risk of diluting its exclusive image by offering lower priced items.
The luxury world had gone wild in pursuit of the idea that nothing could be too expensive and no profit margin too exorbitant, Nemarq wrote in le Figaro. Some firms had been ticketing their goods at ten times the cost price he said. "It is the end of the rapture, the crash of the hubris...The pursuit of exclusive trophies... is finished. We will now return to reason, decency and discretion."
While much of the industry believes that the key to survival lies in maintaining exclusivity, Mauboussin has created a stir by reaching for a wider market, opening new, less expensive, shops, in Manhattan and Tokyo. "Let us resolutely drop our profit margins and offer affordable luxury products," said Nemarq. The alternative would be fire sales and empty shops, he predicted.
It's hard not to see his point. In my ignorance, I am still reeling from the price of the standard Burberry scarf that my daughter requested for her 15th birthday last month (don't ask).
The Sarkozys have taken to the law-courts again. The President failed to get a judge to ban a voodoo doll in his image last month. Today, Carla Bruni's lawyers were in court in the French Indian Ocean island of La Réunion demanding heavy damages against a firm that put her naked likeness on a bag.
Madame Sarkozy is seeking 50,000 euros for the "moral offence" and a further 75,000 euros in damages to her professional image as a model-singer. Pardon, a beach-wear firm, took the liberty of printing a drawing of a well-known nude portrait of France's Première Dame on its jokey three-euro cloth bag. A speech bubble had her saying: "My guy should have bought me Pardon."
The firm, which specialises in provocation and has a couple of outlets in France and on the internet, took fright and promised to burn all 10,000 of the offending bags, but that was not enough for Bruni's lawyers. A court hearing went ahead in Saint-Denis, the Reunion capital, and a verdict is due on Thursday.
Pardon should have known better. Bruni and Sarko are quick to sue when someone attempts to cash in on their images. Bruni won 60,000 euros a few months ago after a successful prosecution of Ryanair for putting the couple in an advert (She gave the money to charity, she says). That was for damages to her professional image. The court awarded only one euro for the alleged moral damage that it had caused her.
The lawyer for the clothes firm told the court that "no-one recognised Carla Bruni in the drawing on the bag." He also wondered why Madame Sarkozy had not sued Christie's auction house in New York for selling the original 1993 nude photograph last April on behalf of the photographer, Michel Comte. The picture, taken for an Aids awareness campaign, went to a Chinese collector for 91,000 dollars -- twenty times more than its pre-sale estimate.
President Sarkozy, a lawyer by profession, has turned out to be by far the most litigious head of state in modern French history. His predecessors kept a regal distance above abuses of their image -- though, like François Mitterrand, they sometimes resorted to dirtier means of revenge than the courts.
While Nicolas Sarkozy has been off sorting out Europe for the past couple of days, le microcosme -- the Paris political and media world -- has been chattering about another subject: his trouble with women.
When he was elected, Sarko appointed 13 female ministers. Three of them caused a splash because of their exotic origins, beauty or leftwing origins. None had political experience. These are Rachida Dati, 43, the Justice Minister, whose working class parents came from Algeria and Morocco; Rama Yade, 32, the Senegalese-born junior Minister for Human Rights, and Fadela Amara, 44, the Minister for the Inner City.
Amara, a tough-talking activist of north African back-ground, has failed to make a mark in the rightwing government. But Sarkozy's problem stems from the two glamorous protegées. Dati has been a disaster in her senior and sensitive post and Yade has committed repeated insubordination. The two icons of Sarkozy's "rainbow cabinet" are in disgrace yet he has proved unable to sack or transfer them.
[picture above: the pair at Windsor on Sarkozy's visit to the Queen last March].
So we have another chance to examine the President's well-known Achilles heel. Super Sarko may be an alpha male chief executive but he is putty in the hands of women. The point was made a couple of years ago by Simone Veil, the political grande dame who legalised abortion in the 1970s. "In the presence of women, Nicolas is a child," she said.
Yade, who was a civil servant before her elevation, has repeatedly spoken out of turn yet each time she has been forgiven. She has just refused an order from Sarkozy to leave her post to lead his UMP party in the European Parliament. Bernard Kouchner, the Foreign Minister, humiliated her in public on Wednesday, saying that it had been a mistake to create the Human rights post. He spoke of her unpleasantly in the past tense.
Yade's biggest public gaffe was condemning Sarkozy's invitation to Muammar Gadaffi to visit Paris. The Libyan leader "must understand that our country is not a doormat on which a leader, terrorist or not, can wipe the blood of his crimes," said Yade.
Yade [left] has also taken a few swipes at her rival favourite at the royal court. She recently put down Dati, saying that she "is only interested in dresses and parties."
Dati, who previously worked on Sarkozy's staff, has offended just about everyone. She has infuriated judges, prison guards and lawyers with the ruthless way that she has imposed reforms. Once adored, she has become a figure of media mockery for her blunders, her high spending on designer clothes and official jets and her delusions of grandeur.
When Barack Obama won the presidency, she commanded the French embassy in Washington to get his mobile number so she could phone him. The Elysée ordered her to calm down. Sarkozy has put Dati under political house arrest and banned her from the media.
On Thursday he was incandescent after she was said by Le Point, a respectable news weekly, to have boasted that she was unsackable because she knew about past political corruption involving Sarkozy. Dati has denied this in an angry letter to the magazine (here)
The unmarried Dati has two strong cards. She is the star symbol of the ethnic diversity upon which Sarkozy places great store. She is also expecting a baby in February. She has refused to name the father and says that she plans only brief maternity leave. Sacking or demoting the new mother would not look good. (Guessing the father has been a Paris parlour game for the past few months.)
The President's need for the favour of strong women is a constant in his biography. The trait can be tracked from his fatherless up-bringing by a formidable mother through to his dependence on Cecilia, the wife who left him in pieces last year and his lightning remariage to Carla Bruni last February.
It can also explain his fraught relations with Angela Merkel. The reserved German Chancellor is cold to Sarkozy's compulsion to dominate through charm.
In Temoignage (Testimony), a hastily written pre-election memoir, Sarkozy wrote in gushing teerms of of his admiration for women and the need, when dealing with them, to "dare to say sensitive things without being sentimental". He added: "Women generate drive in their own way. They have their own ways of thinking and acting."
Yazmina Reza, the playright who followed Sarkozy throughout his campaign, depicted him as both a bully and a little boy eager to please. Isabelle Balkany, a Paris suburban politician and friend, describes him as "un séducteur -- a seducer or a charmer -- whom it is hard for a woman to resist."
Sarkozy finds it hard to say no to women or incur their displeasure, according to those who know him. "This is the case even when they go beyond the limits in the eyes of most other people," said Caroline Derrien and Candide Nedelec, authors of Sarkozy et les femmes: Un homme sous influence (Sarkozy and women: a man under the influence). The pair describe the President as a "like a big self-centred teenager who is very proud of his political and private conquests".
The latest influence is the supermodel-singer whom he married in February. Bruni, who hails from rich artistic circles, has swayed the authoritarian president towards her leftwing thinking. She persuaded him to cancel the extradition to Italy of an alleged former terrorist last month and she encouraged him to slap down Dati last week when she proposed locking up 12-year-old delinquents.
Dati's fall from grace is dated to Sarkozy's romance with Bruni last winter. In a widely reported incident, Bruni is said to have teased Dati one evening as they walked past the Presidential bedroom in the palace. "You would have liked to be there wouldn't you," Bruni said. That tale sounded far-fetched when it came out in a book earlier this year, but I have heard from good sources that it was true.
In some places -- including Britain and the USA -- beauty pageants are no longer deemed suitable for prime time on main networks. Happily -- or I should probably say unfortunately -- that's not the case for France.
On Saturday night eight million people -- that's 13 percent of the population -- watched the Miss France contest, a jamboree that makes few concessions to feminist principles and is strong on soap opera. The young women parade in high heels in both one and two-piece swim-suits as the commentator praises their charms and talents [bottom picture]. The contestants tell us of their ambitions. Miss Pays de Loire, for example, hoped to "invest myself in humanitarian charities as a representative of elegance."
It's supposed to be family fun and there is usually a feud to keep up the interest. Tensions are soothed by Jean-Pierre Foucault, the oily compère, but the whole thing is ruled by Geneviève de Fontenay, a dragon who is known as "the lady with the hat" [right in the top picture].
De Fontenay, 76, has managed Miss France since 1953 and has been its boss since 1981. Without her, it's likely that the whole kitschy exercise would collapse. This year's drama arose from de Fontenay's banishment of Valérie Bègue, the 2008 Miss France after a former boyfriend circulated photographs of her in less than chaste poses. 
The unfortunate Bègue, from the French island of La Réunion, had kept her title, but she was exiled to los Angeles last Thursday to keep her away from the show where she was supposed to crown her successor. TF1, the host network, wanted her there but de Fontenay over-ruled them. They got their own back when Foucault announced on air that de Fontenay had vetoed the popular Bègue and the crowd booed the lady with the hat.
The winner this year, picked by judges and popular telephone vote, was Chloé Mortaud, a 19-year-old student from the southwestern Ariège département. Like some previous Miss Frances (It's Miss France, not Mademoiselle) she is of mixed race. She is also the first to hold dual French and US citizenship. Her African-American Mother came from Mississippi. Mortaud, who is studying business and had already been crowned Miss Albigeois-Midi Pyrénées, said she deserved the national crown because "with a smile I will transmit happiness to people." She also seized l'air du temps and made the most of her mixed race in her pre-decision pitch. "This polyvalency is an advantage," she said.
As the press talked about the Obama effect yesterday, Mortaud said she would be an ambassadress for racial tolerance. "I want to go to people and explain to them that fear of the other is unfounded. I want to incarnate today’s French diversity".
While Mortaud starts her year of glory, de Fontenay has moved on to another battle. She is fighting rebellion by Guadeloupe, the French Caribbean territory. The island has had the effrontery to send a dissident Miss Guadeloupe to the Miss World pageant in South Africa next week. "She is illegitimate", says de Fontenay. Guadeloupe is part of her Miss France empire and France is to be represented in Johannesbourg by the second runner-up to the banished Ms Bègue from 2008.
De Fontenay usually gets her way, so I hope the insurgent from Guadeloupe is watching her back. Yes this is all frivolous stuff -- despite the millions of euros tied up in the exercise. It's taken with a pinch of salt here, although France has fewer qualms than some other places when it comes to patronising women. As an example of that, I just heard Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a recent Prime Minister, defend Rachida Dati, 41, the embattled Justice Minister, on the radio, calling her "une fille exceptionnelle" -- an exceptional girl.
The Miss World contest, launched in London in 1951, has become an off-shore exercise in recent years, being staged in China, Africa and so on. But don't forget that about 2.5 billion people are expected to watch it next week. To close on a memory, one of my first assignments as a journalist was to report backstage from a Miss World contest in the Albert Hall. It was a morally confusing mission of course.
[Below: swimsuits for Miss France 2009]
It's always impressive how quickly France adopts a fashion. One day no-one is wearing ballerine shoes, then everyone is (à la Carla Bruni). We are now in the midst of a new sartorial craze -- le gilet jaune, or the high-visibility vest.
You may remember how the state ran a tongue-in-cheek campaign that used Karl Lagerfeld to publicise a new law requiring fluorescent safety vests to be carried inside all vehicles. "It's yellow, it's ugly and it goes with nothing, but it can save your life," said Karl.
The fashion icon did the trick. Suddenly Day-Glo is everywhere. Paris cyclists, who had always eschewed safety gear as un-chic still don't wear helmets much, but yellow is their new black. The same applies to scooter riders, protest marchers and people handing out leaflets.
That's obviously commendable. More cyclists can now be seen in the winter gloom. But the really odd manifestation of the gilet jaune is a fashion for draping them around front car seats.
It seems to have started because people believed that the new law requires them to be visible, not stashed in the glove-box or seat pocket. Some mistakenly thought that this would prevent police from stopping them to check their compliance (They are still stopped because they have to carry a triangle as well). Now, somewhere about one in ten cars are sporting the yellow vest look, according to quick surveys around the country. They are more prevalent in the provinces than Paris. The gilet jaune around the seat has become the new version of the nodding dog on the rear shelf or the furry dice hanging from the rear-view mirror.
The fad is annoying many people and it is now seen as a joke. It has become a defining symbol of "beaufitude" -- naffness in UK English -- like Bluetooth earpieces or wearing mobile phones on the belt or the tourists who carry bottles of water around Paris.
The gilet-on-display fashion is so irritating that there are now about 200 groups on Facebook devoted to fighting it. There are 70,000 members in the biggest one, called Contre les cons qui foutent leur gilet jaune fluo sur le siège auto [Against the plonkers who stick their yellow fluorescent vest on the car seat]. Watch an anti-gilet jaune squad in street action here.
Some newspapers have studied the phenomenon. La Charente Libre, based in the west, found that drivers thought the vest was fun on the seat because it "brightens things up". Other were doing it "because everyone else is doing it." Their prize went to the man in a green Citroen Xsara who had equipped both front seats with yellow vests and had two more on the back seat on top of a Johnnny Hallyday towel.
Hallyday, France's rock'n roll monument, is himself a high-grade symbol of beaufitude. Nicolas Sarkozy is a big Hallyday fan but we don't know yet if the President has fitted a yellow vest on the seat of the black Mercedes 4x4 (SUV) which he drives about town. Black SUVs are of course another symbol of heavy-duty beaufitude, but I'm getting off the point.
 [Below: fashionable chien parisien]
 A lump of lead from a dusty drawer in a Paris museum has enabled French experts to solve a long-standing mystery.
The size of a pigeon's egg, the piece turned out to be a casting of the legendary Blue Diamond, the centre-piece of the crown jewels of pre-revolutionary France. The diamond, bought by Louis XIV in the 17th century, vanished when looters stole King Louis XVI's treasures in the heat of the revolution in 1792. The find in the Paris Museum of Natural History has in turn enabled researchers to prove that the long-lost blue diamond is one and the same as the Hope Diamond, a star exhibit of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC [in picture]
It had long been suspected that the Hope, which was given to the Smithsonian in 1958 by the jeweller Harry Winston and which is said to carry a fatal curse, came from the Diamant Bleu that was looted in Paris in 1792. This has now been confirmed by François Farges, the chief mineralogist with the Paris museum. He has concluded that the Hope is the cut-down heart of the 69-carat Indian diamond that the Sun King bought in the mid-17th century.
[The lead casting of Blue Diamond]
The breakthrough came when Farges and his team were rummaging through thousands of ancient items in the museum. They were intrigued by lot number 50,165, the lead casting. It was tagged as "replica of a blue diamond belonging to Monsieur Hoppe of London". Jewellers used to keep lead castings of stones that they cut.
The replica matched period pictures of the long-lost royal gem. The French team compared it to computer measurements of the Hope sent from Washington and found that the US stone fitted perfectly inside the Blue Diamond. "It is more than a hypothesis," said Farges. "We have carried out analyses by scanner and laser, which have been validated by experts in gemology."
Suspicions were first aroused in 1812, when a massive blue stone of 45.54 carats turned up in London in the hands of Daniel Eliason, a diamond merchant. Until now, Henry Philip Hope, a City banker, only appeared as the diamond's owner in 1839.
The lead casting now links Hope to the plundered diamond, which was originally bought in the 17th century by Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, an adventurer, from the ruler of Golconda, in what is now the Indian state of Hyderabad.
Farges says that he did not sleep for two weeks after the discovery of the casting. He pieced together what he believes was the trail of the gem, which in the early 18th century had become part of the Order of the Golden Fleece, a concoction of gold, diamonds and rubies that was made for Louis XV [Pictured here].
The diamond, reputed to have been the most dazzling ever seen, was smuggled to London where it was acquired by Hope and crudely recut, shearing off 23.5 carats as well as its original lustre, says Farges. Eliason was just a front for Hope, says the mineralogist. He has just published his findings in the peer-review journal Revue de Gemmologie.
The Hope diamond changed hands many times after the banker's death. It came to Paris and was owned for a time by Pierre Cartier, the jeweller, before reaching the United States in 1911. The tale of a curse arose from the real or imagined sticky ends of some of its owners, including Louis XVI and Tavernier. The king ended up of course on the guillotine. The adventurer who brought it to France was said to have stolen it from a statue of the goddess Sita. He was later torn to pieces by wolves in Russia, according to the legend.
The Paris museum has made a replica of the royal diamond out of zirconium. It is hoping that a wealthy patron might pay for a synthetic diamond version. Farges does not expect France to ask for its stone back. Napoleon Bonaparte delared crimes of the revolutionary period exempt from prosecution in 1804.
"The diamond has been recut, which means that the one in Smithsonian is in effect a completely different stone," Farges adds.
[below: how the Hope was cut from the King's Blue Diamond]
 It's hard not to feel sorry for Rachida Dati, the Justice Minister and glamorous protegée -- at least until now -- of Nicolas Sarkozy.
Dati, who is expecting a baby in a few weeks time, is unpopular with just about everyone. Judges, lawyers and court personnel see her as arrogant and heavy-handed.
On Tuesday, 536 judges signed a protest letter demanding that she apologize in public for her conduct and "incoherent policies". Sarkozy is said to have run out of patience with the woman whom he appointed as a symbol of success for non-white immigrant France. Dati depicts herself as Sarko's loyal soldier but he refused to give her any support at a Cabinet meeting yesterday. The President has been especially annoyed by Dati's fondness for posing in glossy magazines wearing expensive designer gear. Last month, he told the whole cabinet to avoid appearances in evening dress or luxurious contexts. His "anti-bling" order was intended to avoid offending people at a time of economic hardship.
So Sarko cannot be pleased by the fuss over the pictures above. The lefthand portrait of Dati appeared across le Figaro's front page yesterday. Today, L'Express.fr found that le Figaro, the most pro-Sarkozy newspaper, had erased the expensive ring that Dati was wearing in the original. It was identified as a grey gold and diamond item from Chaumet, the Paris jewellers, which costs 15,600 euros. Le Figaro insists that there was no political intent behind the retouching. Paris Match claimed the same thing when it slimmed down Sarko's naked torso in a beach shot last year.
Debora Altman, Figaro's Photo Editor, says that it was an honest error of judgment. Her team removed the ring to stop it monopolising a picture that was being used to illustrate the revolt of the judges, she said.
The unmarried Dati, whose working class parents came from Algeria and Morocco, plans to take only one week off to give birth to the baby. That is 15 weeks less than the maternity leave that is offered to all French women. She has refused to name the father and no-one has come forward. Two politicians -- Jose Maria Aznar, the former Spanish Prime Minister, and Bernard Laporte, the Sports Minister -- have publicly denied paternity. That has helped fuel the frenzy of gossip, which I am indulging in here. Dati has been close to two captains of French industry over the past couple of years, as well as Aznar.
Sarkozy is expected to reshuffle his Cabinet in January. It is likely that he will move Dati -- who was a judge herself -- out of Justice. But he is thought unwilling to lose one of the icons of his government so may give her another job.
[Below: The Chaumet ring, called Liens (links)]
Purists here have jumped on my headline "la belle France" over the post on wind farms. The French don't say that, I was told. So let's be pedantic and look at the odd things that happen when one language borrows from the other.
I used la belle France advisedly. The expression is old but it is used internationally and it conveys a whiff of Frenchness, like Zut alors! which no-one says much either. It is one of a long list of French words and expressions that are current in English but not in France. The same happens the other way round, or lycée de Versailles, as the kids here say [footnote*].
A friend was complaining the other day that her job requires her to 'faire du phoning' -- making prospective sales calls. She had just had her brushing and was talking about a new restaurant fad called le fooding. These coinages can be useful. I find myself talking about 'un best of' because it's a good term for selected hits. We'll soon have le best of de Sarko 2008. Le smoking (tuxedo to Americans) has long been more concise than the British dinner jacket or black tie. The French media have become très people lately. The word, meaning celebrity culture, presumably came from People, the doyen of US celeb magazines.
In the other direction, a recent Times editorial was headlined Plus ça change. A Parisian colleague asked me what that meant. The proverb plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, is standard in English but has fallen out of common use here. The same goes for déjà vu and crème de la crème (You say le gratin -- the grilled cheese topping a dish -- for crème de la crème)
Then there are the errors. When I write bon vivant in an article , it is "corrected" in the newspaper to read bon viveur, conforming to the English usage. Educated Brits say "chacun a son goût" (each has his/her taste) although the French expression is "(à) chacun son goût" (to each, his/her taste).
The Eurovision song contest has added a Gallic joke to the English language: nul points. It's not French. Here, when a contestant scores nil, they say "zero pointé".
Many meanings have changed over the years. In France, une entrée is now the starter or appetizer, while Americans use it to mean main dish. The entrée originally came between the two when people ate more courses.
People stopped saying sacré bleu! around world war two, but the exclamation lives on in British newspapers and entertainment, along with zut alors! In similar manner, Englishmen in French cartoons always exclaim Damned! and greet their friends by saying "how do you do".
French gave a lot of food words to the world but doesn't use all of them itself. A Napoleon is an item of pâtisserie in some English-speaking places as well as Russia and parts of Europe. In France it's a mille-feuille (thousand leaves). Unlike the English-speaking world, France has no restauranteurs. It has only restaurateurs, which literally means restorers.
Clothes are an old field for linguistic confusion. Un slip are men's underpants (shorts). A brassière is un soutien-gorge. And there's no space to go into all the dangerous faux-amis like préservatif meaning condom. The New York Times committed a howler not long ago when it quoted Nicolas Sarkozy as saying that he had been deceived by someone. He had talked about his déception -- which means disappointment.
The two languages have been borrowing from one-another for a thousand years. Sometimes the same word gets imported twice. Vanguard, meaning the front of an army, came from avant-garde long ago. In the late 19th century it was re-imported as avant-garde, with an arty sense. English tends to mangle French words when it absorbs them. Une discothèque is still called that in its homeland while it became a disco in English.
And then, for enthusiasts who are still with me, there is the way that imported words change the sense of the original language. To the anger of the Académie Française this has been pretty much one-way lately, with French-rooted English words re-crossing the Channel and devouring their ancestors.
The verb supporter in French (to bear or put up with) has acquired the additional English meaning of backing a team or a cause. Réaliser (to fulfill or carry out) is being used instead of se rendre compte, as in "je n'ai pas réalise que j'étais un loser (I didn't realise I was a loser).
There is an embarras du choix for scoring points in the language business. Or should that be embarras de choix? Please add the words that I've missed from this résumé.
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* Lycée de Versailles is an old rhyming substitute for vice-versa (pronounced veesay-versa) .
Update: In response to comments below, this is une clef anglaise -- an English key -- which is monkey wrench in American and adjustable spanner in Britain.
Nicolas Sarkozy had a hard time in Normandy yesterday trying to convince workers at a Renault car factory that he was a regular guy who understood their fear of losing their jobs. That might be because of photographs such as this one.
The picture, from this week's Paris Match magazine, speaks for itself. Times are hard and the French are worried for their livelihoods yet their president is posing for glamour pictures with Carla Bruni, his wife, in the Carlyle hotel in New York City. In the picture, taken by Pascal Rostain, Bruni's regular photographer, Sarko seems to be aiming for something between the Great Gatsby and Al Capone, as played by Robert de Niro. In the one below, captioned "Alone in the world in Manhattan", Sarko seems to be the hero in a romantic comedy. The text even talks about the couple's "Manhattan escapade".
It is hard to grasp the logic which drives Sarko to show off like this. In recent months he had toned down the "bling-bling", his instinct for exhibitionism, after the pollsters told him that it accounted for a big part of his unpopularity. He even put it out that he spent his evenings on his collection of ancient manuscripts and postage stamps. But people close to Sarko say that he is on something of a high these days, revelling in his role as crisis manager and trouble-shooter for Europe.
He was reported this week to have been boasting in private that he had "stopped the Red Army" on its advance to Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, last August. His European mini-summit on the financial crash last Saturday produced almost nothing but Super Sarko visibly enjoyed his job as chairman -- which he holds a current steward of the European Union's rotating presidency.
The excitement of battle seems to have got the better of Sarko's judgment and that of his image advisers. Having luxurious fun in New York, the source of the financial mayhem that has hit Europe, is surely not a great idea. It hardly matches the censorious terms with which Sarko damned Wall Street greed in a speech in Toulon two days after his return from New York. It is especially surprising since the president ordered his ministers last month to stop appearing in glamour shots in the celebrity press. "In times like these, I don't want to see pictures of anyone at fancy events in dinner jackets (tuxedos) and long Dior dresses," he was reported to have told the cabinet. The main target was taken to be Rachida Dati, his Justice Minister.
It is interesting to muse on what Charles de Gaulle would have made of the behaviour of the fifth man to follow him in the presidency. This week marks the 50th anniversary of the creation of the Fifth Republic, the presidential regime that was tailor-made for the old wartime saviour. The system was deliberately monarchical to get away from decades of parliamentary paralysis. But Charles and Yvonne de Gaulle led an austere life, even paying for their own telephone calls at the Elysée Palace, or so it is said. These pictures suggest that Nicolas and Carla are enjoying life at the other extreme.
France has just notched up two royal weddings within eight months and you might say that speed was an element of both. Jean Sarkozy, 22, second son of the President, exchanged vows at his local town hall late yesterday with Jessica Sebaoun, 20, his long-time girlfriend.
An ugly episode involving French anti-semitism preceeded the wedding, of which more below.
Sarko senior was at the Neuilly mairie for the simple civil ceremony along with Carla Bruni, his third wife, whom he married last February. There were 100 guests, many from the money, politics and show-biz set that Jean and his dad frequent. Among them was Doc Gynéco, the louche rap singer and Sarkozy supporter who starred in a post here the other day.
Sarko senior married Bruni in haste, three months after meeting her. In contrast, his glamorous son has known his bride, heiress to the Darty retail fortune, since schooldays in Neuilly, his dad's political fiefdom. "I promised you at 16 that I would marry you before I was 26," Jean told Jessica at the ceremony. "Well, I have done it sooner." To quash rumours, Paris Match magazine was authorised to tell readers today that the new Madame Sarkozy is not expecting a baby.
In Jean's case, the speed applies to his meteoric leap to stardom in his own right over the past year. Pierre Sarkozy, 23, his brother, leads a quiet life as a rap music producer (I'm not making this up) but Jean is in a big rush, just like his father was.
Jean is known sometimes as Monsieur Fils -- a play on the title held by the king's brother (the previous king's second son) in royal days. But the prince insists that he is working his way up the ladder as a humble commoner.
Continue reading "Sarkozy's golden boy gets married " »
 We are losing track of all the deceased French celebrities whose lives are being turned into cinematic nostalgia trips. French film-makers have discovered a taste for the American-style "bio-pic", and it's doing it rather well.
The fad was opened by La Môme (called La Vie en Rose abroad), a souped-up version of the melodramatic life of Edith Piaf. Even before that film became an international hit and Marion Cotillard won her Best Actress Oscar for the part last spring, a string of other bio-pics were in the works. After Piaf came Sagan, Diane Kurys' biography of Françoise Sagan, the self-destructive author of the teenage novel Bonjour Tristesse.
That movie, starring Sylvie Testud, was the last film that Nicolas Sarkozy went to the cinema to see, according to Carla Bruni, his wife. The latest in the genre is to be a version of the sad life of Romy Schneider, the Franco-Austrian actress who died in 1982 at the age of 42.
No fewer than three biopics are about to recount the meteoric rise of an orphaned Parisian hatmaker called Coco Chanel. The biggest of them is likely to be Coco Avant Chanel, directed by Anne Fontaine and starring Audrey Tautou (above), which is due out next year.
Out next month is a life of Michel Colucci, the subversive comic known as Coluche who was killed on his motor cycle in 1986 at the age of 42. Then comes is Ennemi Public Numéro Un, starring Vincent Cassel, the tale of Jacques Mesrine, a gangster who was shot dead in an ambush by Paris police in 1979.
Continue reading "Celebrity lives, the French new wave" »
Carla Bruni was on the radio this morning sounding defensive about the sales of her new album, Comme si de rien n'était (titled Simply in English).
President Sarkozy's new wife enjoyed spectacular worldwide publicity on the album's release in July and Naive, her label, insists that the record is doing well. Over 300,000 copies have been sold, they say, 140,000 of them outside France. The CD reached the number one spot for French albums for a week in mid-August but is now back down at ninth.
There have been rumours in the trade that the record is not exactly flying out of the shops, even taking the morose market into account. The official figures correspond to CDs shipped to stores. Le Parisien newspaper got hold of the actual sales yesterday. A total of 80,657 have been bought by French customers in the first seven weeks of release, not the official 160,000, and sales are slowing.
Given the novelty effect of the first lady's record and the huge promotion by French and international media, that figure is quite modest. "The artist would have been entitled to expect better for both good and bad reasons," said le Parisien. "No record has ever been so talked about, or fed so much speculation and shaped firm opinions before it was heard." Patrick Zelnik, chief executive of Naive, calls the record "not a triumph but a success."
Bruni's long interview on Europe 1 radio was part of an attempt to restart sales with a fresh round of promotion. This includes a singing appearance in Britain on September 16 on the BBC TV show Later ... with Jools Holland.
Here's what she told Marc-Olivier Fogiel on Europe 1 radio this morning: "I don't get involved in figures much. ... In one month you don't know the figures for an album. And it's already quite something to manage to release an album these days, whoever you are. ... Whatever the number of people who have had the kindness or curiosity to go and buy it, it's a miracle. Then, summer is a doomed season for everything that's music etcetera... You have to know that an album takes months and months to reach the ears and hearts of people."
Bruni also said that she recognised that giving the disc to every member of her husband's council of ministers for their summer listening might have been a little questionable. The gift raised media eyebrows, as did her use of the Elysée Palace roof for a cover portrait of her for Vanity Fair (above). Annie Leibowitz took the shot for an article timed for the record release.
Bruni may be smash hit for the celebrity press, but her image as a sensitive leftwing singer-composer has suffered from her over-exposure. The public and critics who enjoyed the first album of the Franco-Italian super-model are not generally fans of her rightwing husband. The critics have been quite rude about the third album, sung in the breathy mumbling tones that are her trademark. Bakchich, an irreverent news site, has just called it flabby, old-fashioned and "the ideal gift for the next grandmothers' day."
Nicolas Canteloup, the best current comic impersonator, has a running gag in which he imitates her as near inaudible. He mocked Bruni to her face on Europe 1 this morning, with a sketch claiming that she had won an award for boosting the sales of hearing aids. Bruni gave a cool performance, managing to brush off Fogiel's cheeky questions, such as "Would you have fallen in love with Nicolas Sarkozy if he wasn't president of France?"
While I'm at it, Bruni, 40, also said that she and Sarkozy are hoping to produce a baby. Since I'm already guilty of writing a bit of froth today, I might as well mention another piece of unconfirmed gossip that has been doing the rounds and even made it into Libération this morning. They say that Rachida Dati, 42, the Justice Minister, and glamour figure among Sarkozy's ministers, has a first baby on the way.
 It was clever to use a fashion icon for the latest attempt to make French roads less lethal. From July 1, high visibility vests must be carried within reach of the occupants of all cars (not in the boot). Emergency triangles are also to become compulsory.
In the posters, Karl Lagerfeld says: "It's yellow, it's ugly and it goes with nothing, but it can save your life." The advert adopts the playful tone that France until recently used in campaigns to cajole its citizens into driving less homicidally.
I have always suspected that France has shunned the yellow vests because they are not cool. The 74-year-old Chanel designer, wearing his new line of sunglasses in the dark, makes them look less ringard, or naff. "Karl is doing this entirely free of course," his assistant told le Parisien today. "He adored the concept and the slogan... His appearance is how he likes it, not where you would expect him to be, with a bit of self mockery."
France has come late to safety measures that have long been in force in more northern countries. Automatic speed cameras only arrived fIve years ago. French cyclists have only lately begun wearing helmets and yellow gilets and these are still rare. You do not look chic pedalling a vélib bike through Paris with Day-glo gear and a funny hat -- especially since British conservative politicians adopted the look.
Only in the past year have police begun wearing bright jackets to direct traffic on the Place de l'Opéra below our office. They used to be hard to spot amid dense traffic in the intersection and they were invisible at night. The Gendarmerie motorcycle police still do not wear high-visibility jackets on patrol.
A police clampdown and ubiquitous speed cameras succeeded in bringing France's very high road death toll down by 10 percent a year from 2002-2006. A visitor from the old days would be amazed to see how fear of radar has slowed the traffic on the motorways almost down to the 130kph (81mph) limit . The British and Dutch tourists now stick out as the roadhogs as they hurtle down the autoroutes in the knowledge that they won't have to pay any fine. One British man was stopped twice in Normandy last weekend cruising at 230 kph (144 mph). They confiscated his Ferrari on the spot the second time.
But French drivers have not much modified their brutal manners in traffic and the figures show them going back to their old dangerous habits. Figures released yesterday put the drop in deaths for 2007 at only 1.9 percent, with 4,260 people killed. There was a 5.4 rise in injuries. This puts France eighth in the European safety league, with 85 road deaths per million inhabitants per year, according to the latest EU stats. Malta, a small island, is the safest, followed by the Dutch, whose country often seems like one big traffic jam.
France was offered another teaser today ahead of the July 21 release of the new album by Carla Bruni, the singer-model whose marriage to President Sarkozy has made her one of the music industry's hottest properties.
The album of 14 songs, mainly written by Bruni with help from her friends, is being guarded by Naive records like a state secret. They gave a first listen to a safe audience -- le Figaro newspaper, which is the most pro-Sarko outlet in the French media.
Bruno Dicale, their music critic, proclaimed her opus a stunning success. If only the world could appreciate Bruni's new songs on their own merit rather than viewing them as the effort of France's first lady, he said. But, feeding the unhealthy interest which he deplores, Dicale quoted a couple of new lines that will excite interest.
Here they are. In the song Ma Came, which I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, Bruni sings: "
You are my fix,
More deadly than Afghan heroin
More dangerous than Colombian white
In a song called Une enfant, Bruni sings:
I am a child
Despite my 40 years
Despite My 30 Lovers
A child.
Dicale says the song, set to a Schumann lied, is of "a touching immodesty". It is one of the summits in an album which Bruni delivers with her "bewitching, fragile and dense voice". Her style is more French chanson with a dash of Beatles, and less American folk than her previous two albums, he adds.
Bruni's people say that 95 percent of the mainly autobiographical numbers were written before she met Sarko last November. That will not stop the analysis to which they will be subjected. The mention of only 30 lovers will doubtless raise eyebrows, given Ms Bruni's colourful past and her description of herself as a lioness who "could never be monogamous".
In the latest of her promotional interviews today, Bruni says again that she only wants to be appreciated as an artist but she is aware that her status as Mrs Sarkozy will distort things.
Judging by the superlatives already doing the rounds, Bruni need have no fears of about the mainstream media. In its interview today, VSD magazine is breathless in its admiration of the monarch's new consort. "Serene...diaphanous and creative... the elegance of pop without the fatality of overdose..." and so on. She is donating her royalties to humanitarian causes and she is impatient to find a new role for herself in this field, she tells VSD.
In the interview "Carlita", as Sarko calls her, quotes Nietzsche and says that she does not trust people who do not like music. "Music is the expression of feelings. Human beings and nature make it."
A lot more of this awaits us. The US Vanity Fair is running a cover on her in August, with the portrait done, of course, by Annie Leibowitz. She is also to feature in a BBC documentary.
The Elysée Palace is thrilled with the success that Bruni is enjoying in French public opinion. A poll for this week's Journal du Dimanche found that 68 percent approved of her -- compared with only 35 percent for Sarko. The President's team is banking on "the Carla effect" as he gradually restores his image in the eyes of his citizens.
Paris shopkeepers are feeling the bite of Chinese anger over French gestures in favour of Tibet and human rights. In April, after the Olympic flame's bumpy trip through Paris, Chinese shoppers boycotted local branches of the Carrefour chain. Now Chinese tourists are staying away from Paris. The department stores and luxury goods shops are reporting a sharp drop in sales.
No-one wants to estimate the loss, but the shopkeepers of the Boulevard Haussmann and the Champs Elysées say they are worried about their vanishing Chinese customers.
One specialist travel firm tells us that business has dried up completely and a group of 80 newly-married Chinese have cancelled a stay in a chateau at the last minute. "The Chinese travel firms have not received an official boycott order but there are numerous internet blogs, especially in Beijing, in which big Chinese tour operators are discouraging Chinese travellers from going to Paris," said Philippe Yao of China Comfort Travel.
The French government is convinced that tour agencies in Beijing have been told to take France off their European itineraries. The Chinese government denies this. French officials say the freeze was ordered by Guo Jinlong, the mayor of Beijing. He was incensed when Bertrand Delanoe, the Paris Mayor, made the Dalai Lama an honorary citizen of the city.
Continue reading "Paris stores miss their Chinese customers" »
You don't usually think of fashion and wine-making as part of the soldier's life and especially that of the French Foreign Legion. It was touching to see a contingent of légionnaires at the Saint Roch church for the funeral of Yves Saint Laurent yesterday [my newspaper story]. The honour guard was there among the glamour crowd because Saint Laurent was a Grand Officier de la Légion d'Honneur, the second highest rank in the state decoration (the two legions have no direct link).
On the wine front, the Foreign Legion has just announced that it is to sell to the public the product of its magnificent vineyard at Puyloubier, in Provence. The 40 hectare estate, home for 100 invalid legionnaires, is on the slopes of the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, known to the world from Cézanne's paintings. The old soldiers produce 300,000 bottles a year of red, white and rosé under the Côtes de Provence appellation. Until now these have supplied Legion messes around the world. One of the traditions of the corps is that the men dine well, even in the toughest conditions. I discovered this at dinner with Legion officers during the siege of Sarajevo in 1993. We were served the legion wine in fine regimental glasses while mortar shells were exploding nearby (that was three years before Hillary Clinton's fantasy sniper episode).
The wine, being sold under the label Esprit de Corps, is the product of "the cult of the mission and the love of a job well done which is dear to all légionnaires," says the Ministry of Defence. Income will help the estate care for its residents, former soldiers who are physical invalids of have difficulties in adjusting to civilian life. Explaining the existence of its estate, the Legion quotes one of its sacred rules: "Tu n'abandonnes jamais les tiens, ni au combat ni dans la vie -- you never abandon one of your own, neither in battle nor in life.
Given the Legion's reputation for fierce discipline, it's interesting to see how it describes its rosé:
Rien d’audacieux n’existe sans la désobéissance aux règles. Cet aphorisme traduit parfaitement les intentions du vin rosé de la Légion étrangère.
Nothing bold exists without disobeying the rules. This saying perfectly translates the intentions of the Foreign Legion's vin rosé.
[Old légionnaire tends the Provence vines. Beards are Legion tradition]
France is in mourning for a hero today. Yves Saint Laurent, who died last night at the age of 71, was not just a fashion designer. He was part of history and one of the biggest French influences on the world in the latter part of the 20th century.
Old colleagues and admirers were in tears on radio phone-ins this morning, remembering "Monsieur" as they called the former boy genius who took over from Christian Dior at the age of 21.
For the Paris fashion establishment, the YSL era really ended in 2002, when the reclusive couturier retired. His death, from a brain tumour, ended a life that seemed to have brought little happiness. He suffered from chronic depression. Despite his immense success, he remained a fragile soul to the end.
Extremely shy, he hardly ever talked to the press. At his farewell press conference in 2002 he offered a rare glimpse of himself. "I've known fear and terrible solitude. Tranquilizers and drugs, those phoney friends. The prison of depression and hospitals. I've emerged from all this, dazzled but sober."
Continue reading "France says adieu to Yves Saint Laurent " »
Carla Bruni, the Italian model and singer, has not put a foot wrong since she married Nicolas Sarkozy last February. Her new demure, regal style has all but effaced the sulphurous she-cat image that she cultivated in her previous existence. Her presence has helped toned down the brash, over-excited side of the French president. On their London trip in March, the British media melted before her in adoration.
Bruni's first solo act as first lady is coming up with the release of her new album on July 21. It's called "Comme si de rien n'était" (As if nothing happened). One of the tracks is a love song called "Ma Came", which translates as my dope, or my junk.
The only line that has emerged so far goes: “My guy, I roll him up and smoke him." The Elysée Palace is said to be worried that the song, with its drug slang, is unseemly for a première dame. Sarko's people are putting it around that Monsieur le Président is not the guy in the song and that Bruni, whose past conquests included well-known rock stars, wrote it long before she met him.
Continue reading "Carla Bruni's new pot song" »
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CB,
Right, I only heard the word "pissoir" in Austria, the word in use in French was "pissotière".
I remember people in Gasthausen, after a few liters of beer, marching à la queue leu leu to the pissoir, singing "der Stamtish gehets zum pissallen". lol
Posted by: Romain | 15 Dec 2009 17:53:52
DANIEL - it comes from French - you have a lot to answer for!
I fink you gave it to us, we never stole it, honest mister :)
Posted by: dot king | 15 Dec 2009 17:13:12
DANIEL - yes, I had thought along those lines too, everything depends on surrounding context, a nod of the head can be a number of things that a simple "yes" or "oui" doesn't convey : acquiescence, admission, agreement, resignation, request, dismissal (May I go now, Madam?), even denial as a postive answer to a negatively-posed question (Are you unsure of what you're saying?).
As a British stand-up comedy act used to say in a regular weekly radio programme - a catch-phrase with predictable consequences : "When I nod my 'ead, you 'it it" ;D
Posted by: dot king | 15 Dec 2009 17:09:49
‘"on voit si tu votes ou pas." -> "they see you if you don't vote"’ [LILY]
Since you’re the expert, how would you translate: ‘I have egg all over my face’?
Posted by: Rick | 15 Dec 2009 17:00:26
When the French venture out of the kitchen, style eats itself.
Poor chap probably got infected from the amount of Botox he pumps into his face.
Posted by: Paul | 15 Dec 2009 16:58:19
AZLOON - the more serious news reporters from France are saying that it will seem strange to the French that JH is unknown in the States.
I think he might have had more facelifts than Elvis had time to have . . .
There can be no other Elvis, even if "impossible n'est pas français" (which is rich coming the French!) :)
[It's also funny to note that it's American and British papers who called him the French Elvis. That's the label they gave him back in the early sixties. No-one in France calls him that. There was obviously a little miscommunication between the French reporters and the LA Times there. CB]
[On pissoirs, here's what French Wikip. says: Curieusement le nom allemand pour cet objet est Pissoir qui, bien que d'origine française, n'existe plus dans notre langue. Le même mot est utilisé dans toutes les familles des langues slaves. CB]
Posted by: dot king | 15 Dec 2009 16:57:41
Azloon,
Fusionnelle relationship
Very French expression, basically it means you are co-dependent or for child-parent: the umbilical cord was never cut.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 15 Dec 2009 16:55:30
Just putting my oar in ('cos it's freezing cold up here in Brittany) but... why doesn't Mr Scott open a commercial Fox Farm? Just a thought?
Posted by: Keith Eckstein | 15 Dec 2009 16:51:39
I tend to like things that have had a use, so if I'd had them lying around, I might have gone a few € up to get the poinçonneuse, but then agan, probably not . . .
Funny about the word "pissoirs" - I first heard it in France (I already knew it from the BBC serial of "Clochemerle") when I was an au pair at the Christmas / New Year family gathering which included one Philippe from the Paris branch, who had us careering through the Allier woods on bécanes singing:
"hier dans le soir papom papom
dans l'allée des pissoirs papom papom
les grand'mères se battaient papom papom
'vec des manches de balai papom papom . . ."
and that, you'll be happy one and all to know, is as much as I can remember of the ditty.
I've tried it with "pissotières" in case of memory-lapse, but too many syllables . . .
I suppose a "vespasienne" would be a nice garden ornament as long as it didn't carry too much of a whiff of the past ;D
Posted by: dot king | 15 Dec 2009 16:47:15
TO EMINENCE,
Stole - noun - a kind of shawl. 'A wide scarf worn about their shoulders by women' from my Oxford.
Tricky language this English!!!
Posted by: richard jones | 15 Dec 2009 16:20:26
And now, the denial :
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5icCR70KfxdgAD1ihigIwxrdFNRqw
Like Hortefeux would say "Dati, même quand y en a une seule, ça va pas".
Posted by: Romain | 15 Dec 2009 15:55:11
It looks like she's sending out an SOS to her leader maximo. 9000€ a month to nap on the job ? Holly cow !
Dati Mayor of Paris, no way José.
I am under the impression a Brit deputy would have to resign over such statements, am I mistaken ?
Posted by: Romain | 15 Dec 2009 15:37:19
Julio - you're wrong. Rachida Dati was one of the best ministers of the Fillon Cabinet, and I was really saddened when she was forced to resign.
Dati introduced minimum penalties for recidivists; reformed the French judiciary system; banned forced marriages; and dared to return to the Cabinet just 5 days after childbirth, even though feminists were angry. Most of the current French cabinet ministers cannot yet claim, and might never score, a comparable record.
So don't call her a moron, OK?
Posted by: Zbigniew Mazurak | 15 Dec 2009 15:33:08
Here is link to LA Times story today on the encampment outside Cedar-Sinai:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-french-vigil15-2009dec15,0,75935.story
This reporter was only U.S. journalist there.
[Andre Boudou relationship with her daughter is said to be fusionnelle] DRM
OMG, this sounds horrible (without bothering with translation because it sounded so deliciously salacious, and I didn't want to ruin this impression....but I'm ready now :))
BTW, Hallyday was a fairly big story here when he first emerged as the European/French 'Elvis." You just have to be older than dirt to remember it.
Posted by: azloon | 15 Dec 2009 15:28:42
DRM - what do you mean "a bunch of Amnesia"?
Stumped there
Amnesia is a Cap D’Agde club, her father, Andre Boudou, is an entrepreneur who owns a bunch of nightclubs with that name, one in Miami.
The club in Cap D’Agde had a bad reputation, he basically mistook the vault of the club for his bank. His son runs the club now.
In Marseillan he is either a Golden-self-made man or a crook. When you run a club and make money from it, you are far from an angel anyway. Having your daughter, marry someone who is 13 years older than you and 33 older than your daughter looks odd to me. But when you love money. The rumour is that the father-in-law has fait main basse sur les affaires de son gendre. Andre Boudou relationship with her daughter is said to be fusionnelle. Jackie Collins couldn’t write it up.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 15 Dec 2009 15:01:34
JULIO,
"god knows his party has lots of idiots to offload in Brussels"
LOL!
However, it doesn't look any better regarding the party presently in charge in the UK - at least if one extrapolates from quite a few reader letters to the on-line edition of The Times :).
It is up to the British electors to decide who should be sent to Brussels :). Wait and see...
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 15 Dec 2009 14:51:14
"on voit si tu votes ou pas." -> "they see you if you don't vote"
?? ;)
Posted by: Lily | 15 Dec 2009 14:44:36
DOT,
I saw "stole" in the F/E dictionary, but I didn't like the sound of it :). To steal, stole, stolen ...
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 15 Dec 2009 14:40:59
LEX - I thought that too - for a woman who's just "picking the kids up from school" those heels were a bit OTT.
Posted by: dot king | 15 Dec 2009 14:40:50
La traduction n'est pas une science exacte, mais un art - quelquefois difficile!
LILY,
"She nodded in agreement" would be, back in good French: "elle acquiesça de la tête" or "elle approuva de la tête". If one wants to convey fully the English expression, one should write "elle acquiesça (approuva) d'un signe (hochement) de (la) tête". Other variants are possible...
PS:
I checked with my memory resident dictionary and conjugator the conjugation of "acquiescer" - fortunately, it does agree with my on-the-fly spelling :)
Posted by: Daniel Strohl | 15 Dec 2009 14:33:27
When in Rome, do as the Romans do !!
SURCOUF
So you want Ridley Scott to start up a chicken farm?? :)
Mr Scott was asking the unreasonable of some people who haven't done anything that is illegal or really undermines his privacy or his enjoyment during his one-week occupancy of his summer residence.
Were the chicken farmers in breach of regulations, he might have a case to answer, but he's had them "up before the beak" and has gone from being "on a wing and a prayer" to having "not a leg to stand on" (and I think a drumstick roll is fitting for that little lot!).
Now, suppose, for a moment that a French person lives in a house in a French village that they own but don't maintain at any level.
This supposed French person doesn't go out to work, nor does her supposed son, both claim unsupposed disability allowances, though other than psychological, which can be feigned, don't appear incapable of working.
Imagine that they have a non-French neighbour who does work and maintains her own property, which shares a boundary wall at the back with the neighbour.
Imagine that on each side of this boundary wall is a garden outbuilding and that through years of neglect and weather damage, this building's roof has collapsed twice - the first time only affecting one side, the second time taking with it some of the ridge tiles leaving the non-French neighbour's roof in serious danger of imminent collapse.
Should the non-French neighbour say to herself and expect to hear from everyone else "when in Rome etc" or "Non! Je rêve, elle oublie qu'elle n'est pas chez elle!" ?
Or should the non-French person expect French insurance law to cover her problem because she's paid for an insurance policy?
I think (in fact I know for sure) that the non-French person is saying to herself: "they're quick enough to take taxes d'habitation, taxes foncières, insurance premiums, health and social security contributions (which pay the allowances for the "disabled" French neighbours), taxes professionnelles" and goodness only knows what else she might have forgotten to put on the list and is calling for some action on her neighbour's behalf.
Are you saying that French law should only protect the French - because all around me I hear lawyers, judges, magistrates calling for the INDEPENDENCE of the law. Justice is impartial.
Corruption and shennanigins at the level of the local Mairie have nothing to do with the functioning of the law - though they might fall victim to its workings.
Posted by: dot king | 15 Dec 2009 14:33:11
Dot, Rick and Charles –
I had simply WONDERED about “aural pollution”. It won’t cause me sleepless nights.
With regards to Jimmy’s and my remarks in general, “Me thinketh thou doth protesteth too much!”
Rick, I could hunt for examples in older posts but I don’t think either one of us really wants me to go there. Let’s look ahead and see what the future might bring.
Posted by: Lily | 15 Dec 2009 14:26:40
Another documentary “ day in the life of Rachida Dati “.
How many have been there so far?
She is either very cunning, stupid or so self involved she can’t stop making des bourdes when a micro-phone is on.
Negative attention is still attention.
I usually day-dream in boring meetings, have you seen the latest pictures of Hugh Jackman doing yoga on the beach? No need to call a girlfriend.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 15 Dec 2009 14:19:26
Guess who officiated at Johnny's wedding to Laetitia at the Mairie de Neuilly? Why it was non other than the then mayor, a certain Nicolas Sarkozy.
JOHN O'D
Then the next logical move is that Sarkozy makes off with Laetitia, non?
I thought she might have been a model, but I only became aware of her as being Mme Johnny and unlike many women already well-known in their own right, she calls herself Laetitia Halliday.
She is so self-effacing (unless the public persona hides a heart of stone, which I doubt) that she has the effect of producing silence around her, which in turn has the effect of making it look as though others are hanging on her every word, which in turn seems to embarrass her so much that she self-effaces even more . . . and so on...
I think JH has been ailing one way and another for some time in addition to what gets in the news; I remember his mis-hearing a question in a charity quiz programme and digging a real hole for himself by not being able to acknowledge he hadn't heard, when he finally heard but completely misunderstood. Laetitia quite kindly and diplomatically handled it by putting a hand on his arm and saying she knew the answer. Which she did.
I think JH is at least rather deaf now, along with all these other problems and perhaps it is time he rebecame Mr Smet.
DRM - what do you mean "a bunch of Amnesia"?
Stumped there.
It's funny that Charles Aznavour is being quoted and listed as someone who rushed to JH's bedside - as I understood it, he just happened to be on the same plane as some of the people who really were rushing to his bedside - just a coincidence that CA was in the USA at this time at all, but I suppose news has to be sustained somehow.
At least the Americans know who Charles Aznavour is . . .
Posted by: dot king | 15 Dec 2009 14:02:59
" the nurse had to get out of her station because an Asian male did not want to be seen by a woman" -- DO-RE-MI
I dare say in the US these days a female doctor would have returned to see the man. I do not think 'reasonable accommodation' must be made for misogynists, and such is the American sense of humor. I suppose that could be chalked up as an advantage to free market health care.
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 15 Dec 2009 13:48:32
"Does anyone know who or what Laetitia was before she was Mme Halliday?" -- Dot
Don't know, but if she doesn't stop wearing shoes like that, she is going to have back problems as well.
Posted by: Lex Stevens | 15 Dec 2009 13:18:09
‘As I have done in the past, I shall continue to focus on suggesting the more appropriate translation’ [LILY]
Such as Mr Sarkozy’s ‘quite bloomy’ language, for instance?
Posted by: Rick | 15 Dec 2009 13:12:38
In my experience in Switzerland, France, Argentina, Greece, USA, Italy, Bulgaria, UK, Germany, Spain and other countries I've lived in (3 months is the qualifying time)it seems to be 'des nouveaux riches - new money - nea lepta' that cause the problems.
I love the somehow vaguely oxymoronic (syntactically antithetical) 'nuisance sonore', which doesn't sound so bad ((as in superdecibellous (in charge of ten wars at the same time) Wagner). Now 'une nuisance cacaphonique' as in 'f****** clucking' is entirely another matter.
Posted by: richard jones | 15 Dec 2009 13:01:29
Maybe that's a reason why David Cameron , UK next prime minister , lied about the EU referendum, god knows his party has lots of idiots to offload in Brussels.
Posted by: Julio | 15 Dec 2009 12:42:19
That's what happens when "tocards" like Dati get selected to seat in the european parliament.
Political parties use european elections to offload losers , morons or troublesome nut cases to keep them quiet yet faraway from any meaningful responsibilities.
Posted by: Julio | 15 Dec 2009 12:36:56
What really grates is that once again she is showing her very personal view of politics whereby the voters are there to serve her interests rather than the contrary. Reminds me of her mentor.
Posted by: John O'D | 15 Dec 2009 12:29:50
What have the following got in common ? :
Deafening silence
Sweet sorrow
Forward retreat
Silent Scream
Quiet Riot
Serious Joke
Brave Coward
French rockstar
Seriously though don't let's forget that poor ol' Johnny has spent a lot of time in various medical institutions for things like a hip replacement and more recently for a complete check-up which revealed the beginnings of a 'little cancer' of the colon. That check-up was ordered by his tour promotor's insurers following the death of Michael Jackson.
@DOT
Laetitia was a model. Although she's French, much of her early life was spent in Florida where her father had a nightclub.
Guess who officiated at Johnny's wedding to Laetitia at the Mairie de Neuilly? Why it was non other than the then mayor, a certain Nicolas Sarkozy.
Posted by: John O'D | 15 Dec 2009 12:11:55
dot king
She is the daughter of the promoter of a bunch of Amnesia, he knows her since childhood. creepy.
Posted by: do-re-mi | 15 Dec 2009 12:08:15
ROMAIN - Yes, I'd seen it, but I think she might be on a comeback all the same.
She certainly likes the limelight - she surely must have known those micros would pick her up - no politician escapes the eavesdropping mike these days.
I remember seeing her on LGJ with the young man who had been assaulted and insulted by the CRS - she did everything she could to prevent him from speaking - she is also very tactile (calm down TERRY) like Monsieur le Président - hand firmly clamped on forearm to get (i) attention and (ii) the other to shut up.
I would imagine she's rather irritating at close quarters.
And her style has diminished since the top maisons de haute couture are no longer providing her wardrobe :)
Posted by: dot king | 15 Dec 2009 12:01:06
Johnny is a nice actor see 'L'homme du train' with Jean Rochefort and others. I think his 'latest young wife' has been married to him for about 10 years. I'd say he is more popular than Sir Cliff. You only have to walk round a country market here to see tons of Johnny tee shirts, beach towels and duvet covers. My favourite Johnny quote is (when asked about mini skirts) 'I always require my women to wear them'. If he didn't exist he would have to be invented.
Posted by: Louise | 15 Dec 2009 11:56:06
"étole de vison" (mink scarf ?)
DANIEL
"étole" is "stole" - now as I type it it seems wrong - nope, I've checked and it is correct - a "mink stole".
It's often the case that when a French word begins with "é" followed by a "t" you can replace the "é" with "s" and get the English word - the most common example is "étable" - naturally off-hand I can't think of any others. It works with other letters too eg "écorche" - "scorch".
Oh, and of course "écharpe" "scarf", "étoffe" - "stuff" etc . . .
Posted by: dot king | 15 Dec 2009 11:53:09
C'est lui l'étranger et les autochtones sont censés s'adapter à ses exigences ? Non mais il rêve ! When in Rome, do as the Romans do !! There are so many foreigners in the south of France that some of them seem to forget that they are not in their country.
Posted by: Surcouf | 15 Dec 2009 11:51:15
PS to my last post - I am a professional translator.
Posted by: dot king | 15 Dec 2009 11:41:27
They won’t translate an, “Elle faisait signe que oui” as “She made a sign that yes” but they know that this must be translated as, “She nodded in agreement.”
LILy
In a legal situation, say as in a lawyer's office, before a judge, or in a Gendarmerie, the interviewer or interrogator will ask the person "faisant signe que oui" to voice what they're signaling with a silent gesture. It will then be noted, recorded, whatever, so there is no nuance possible, or future denial of the gesture or what was meant by it.
There is a huge difference between translating for LEGAL matters and for the pleasure of future readers.
CHARLES was translating an exact legal expression by a perfectly understandable equivalent expression in English and totally appropriate to the situation he was describing.
That someone might have preferred a prettier more literal expression is irrelevant.
Posted by: dot king | 15 Dec 2009 11:40:15
Charles masters the French language well enough to provide accurate and not just literal translations.
Lily
But this was a legal translation - or at least a translation of a common legal expression - no licence or creativity have their place in legal translations.
It was perfectly understandable, surely?
Posted by: dot king | 15 Dec 2009 11:29:47
"as for the stilted line on 'aural pollution', it was a faithful translation of stilted French legalese"
CB
I recognised it as such, come across it quite often - noise nuisance - also sometimes called "nuisance sonore".
Posted by: dot king | 15 Dec 2009 11:26:44
Dot
Weren't you dating Johnny for a while?
ROCKET
No Dahling - that was your wife
ie I was dating HER ;D
This isn't meant to be a facetious question, but I know it's going to sound like one, however here goes:
Does anyone know who or what Laetitia was before she was Mme Halliday?
Posted by: dot king | 15 Dec 2009 11:18:18
VALENTIN, you can’t have it both ways. First you write: ‘Who cares about the name, as long as ils ne se laissent pas faire, and know how to barricade inside the said village’. Then you write about the bad behaviour of the ‘anglo rich’.
So, bad behaviour by the ordinary and poor is more acceptable than bad behaviour by rich people. This is the ethics of peasants – not of ‘la République Française’ with its (somewhat overblown) claims to universal application.
I wonder how many of your ‘anglo rich’ actually come from England, though I wouldn’t deny the existence of upper-class oiks who gravitate to over-priced fleshpots around the Med. Caveat vendor!
Posted by: Rick | 15 Dec 2009 10:59:57
“Your own ‘inaccurate "literal translation"’ may not be another’s cup of tea, if you see what I mean.”
RICK -
I don’t see what you mean. Professional translators e.g. have standards. They won’t translate an, “Elle faisait signe que oui” as “She made a sign that yes” but they know that this must be translated as, “She nodded in agreement.” – If you stick to the literal translation, the English reader will think that these French must be weirdos, “making signs to say yes” while it would be enough to nod. When you get lost in literal translation by calling it ‘more accurate’, you are fooling yourself. :)
Since Jimmy had brought it up, I had expressed my agreement with him. Now we’re debating translation techniques, their bias or accuracy. RICHARD provided a good example – aural pollution would be noise, and am I right to guess that it would still be “noise” in British legalese? So, then, it would have to be translated as noise, and nothing else. But I didn’t speak up on this since I’m not familiar with English legalese and the obvious, “noise”, hadn’t occurred to me.
As I have done in the past, I shall continue to focus on suggesting the more appropriate translation (when I’m around) rather than judging any interest in distorting the original French meaning. Sarkozy in particular should be read and translated carefully since his language is quite bloomy so that literal translations will always lead to wrong conclusions.
[I don't want to prolong this but just on the point of the famous aural pollution: 'Noise' would have translated 'bruit' in French. The term in the law suit was pollution sonore, if I recall. I think I must have hestitated for maybe a second finding the English. 'Noise' was the easiest and most obvious translation but I opted for words that conveyed the fussiness of the original expression. CB]
Posted by: Lily | 15 Dec 2009 10:20:42
LILY, you wrote: ‘Whenever I happen to come across an inaccurate "literal translation" (based on the French original) that might be biased and prove to be detrimental to accuracy, I won't hesitate to point that out - as I have done in the past.’
Your own ‘inaccurate "literal translation"’ may not be another’s cup of tea, if you see what I mean. Second, why not suggest an improvement rather than risk a judgement call? Third, beware of leaping to a wrong conclusion; for that helps neither cause nor carp. Fourth, pointing out others’ mistakes is very much a zero-sum game. Fifth, suggesting ‘bias’ is impugns another’s honesty, and that’s serious.
As for, ‘Charles masters the French language well enough to provide accurate and not just literal translations’... well I never!
Posted by: Rick | 15 Dec 2009 09:43:23
I have a friend who lives not far from Ridley Scott's house. We sometimes go walking up that way. The area is very rural with little or no traffic, and I can't say I've ever noticed any overpowering whiffs or cackling, so I was somewhat surprised to read this article! (I shall pay more attention next time...)
It's true that the people of Provence are very reserved and there are many 'petits arrangements' that an outsider (ie not a local) has no chance of hearing about until after the fact. That's just the way it is.
IMO it's a case of like it or lump it.
Posted by: Cass | 15 Dec 2009 09:35:46
Valentin
"Everywhere I've been, in the south, each and every time, I have noticed them, not the rich French (who par ailleurs may well behave the same way too, if not worse)"
I suppose there are Russians, Poles, Bulgarians etc who are full of themselves also
So what's the point of your post?
Posted by: rocket | 15 Dec 2009 08:53:00
RICHARD, your sense of words isn’t slipping away. You and I would say noise, smell, and unsightliness. But we aren’t lawyers grabbing for descriptors with neutral connotations and a pseudo-scientific ring to them.
Here is a teaser for you. Who wrote, from the hills above Florence in June 1947, the following words to John Arlott?
‘I hear your voice every day from Trent Bridge . . . You’re not only the best cricket commentator – far and away that; but the best sports commentator I’ve heard, ever; exact, enthusiastic, prejudiced, amazingly visual, authoritative, and friendly.’
Posted by: Rick | 15 Dec 2009 08:47:33
Ok, I hope he gets better. Otherwise Christmas is going to be cancelled or it’s going to be blanket coverage coma’s watch on state TV, with a vigil in LA, with Optic 2000 giving away eyewear.
But how about Dati calling her friend, to tell her she can’t take no more, while wearing her microphone in the EU parliament, caught on tv.
Shows her age, someone younger would have texted. Forget about people left out because of no internet connection.
Some Facebook addicts don’t even call anymore, they leave messages on their profile as if everyone has a Facebook mobile on their phone.
me: where have you been?
"Oh I have left a message on my profile"
me : What is wrong with a phonecall?
" Takes too long"
Posted by: do-re-mi | 15 Dec 2009 08:47:25
Title for a next song?
'C'est bon, on s'en va"
(automatic translation) AFP
15/12/2009 | Updated: 07:59 |"All right, let's go now," said his wife Laetitia singer Johnny Hollyday when he awoke in a hospital in Los Angeles, reports this morning on i-Tele her friend Charles Aznavour. "We said very little. We must not tire. We must give him time to recover," added Charles Aznavour. "He had just woken up. It took color. It is followed. He seems to have a very good surgeon," continued the Armenian singer.
Johnny Hallyday was released yesterday evening of artificial coma in which he was plunged since Friday and spoke to his family gathered in Los Angeles. Johnny Hallyday, 66, had been placed in an induced coma on Friday for the second time in a week, for reasons of "comfort" to alleviate suffering and facilitate treatment.
Posted by: Francois D | 15 Dec 2009 07:26:01