Kerry Says He’ll Fly to France to Show U.S. Solidarity

Be fair: He’d be even later if he walked to France instead of flying.

In a bold display of the impeccable timing, profound sensitivity, and strategic planning that made his failed presidential bid an inspiration to so many Republicans in 2004, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Monday that he would fly to Paris at the end of the week in a gesture of support for the French government’s struggle against terrorism.

Kerry is scheduled to arrive nine days after the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo that left 12 dead and shocked the nation, and four days after the largest demonstrations in French history united more than 40 world leaders and millions of French citizens calling for liberty and peace.

“The United States has been deeply engaged with France from the moment this horrific event took place,” Kerry told reporters. “But appearances matter. It’s important that the world see for itself the strength of this, our oldest alliance. Let no one doubt when I stand for America and proudly say, ‘Lafayette, we are here’ — less than two weeks after the fact.”

Not pictured: President Obama.
Or the Vice-president, or the First Lady, or the Clintons, or any high-ranking members of Congress, or any of their friends, or any of their friends’ neighbors, or that guy they went to school with, or George Clooney, whom the French really like quite a lot.

Yesterday’s rally in Paris saw Hollande joined by one of his chief political opponents, former President Nicolas Sarkozy; as well as Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, two of France’s historic rivals; Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel and President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority; and the President of Ukraine and the Foreign Minister of Russia, setting aside their differences in a display of solidarity.

While more than one million demonstrators converged on Paris’ Place de la République, the ranking American in France yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder, appeared on the Sunday talk shows but did not attend the rally. The U.S. Ambassador to France, whom nobody has ever heard of, represented American interests on the Place de la République.

“I really hated to miss out on the big event,” said Kerry, a former U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. “But you know how it is when the Pats are in the playoffs.”

Kerry added, “I’m hoping [French President François] Hollande can organize something while I’m there. Nothing major, just a couple of hundred thousand people. I realize we can’t get all those heads of state to come back to Paris on short notice, but Belgium is close, right? Or Luxembourg. I’m sure Luxembourg isn’t busy right now.”

Kerry will be in France from Thursday night to Friday afternoon, he said, “More than enough time to show the world the importance of this relationship and the seriousness of our mutual response to terrorist threats. Besides, I’ve got to represent the United States at Princess Diana’s funeral. If I don’t hurry, I’ll miss it.”

Read more!

‘The King and I’ in Paris

Curtain call: In foreground, Susan Graham, James Holmes, and Lambert Wilson.

For several years now, Paris’ Théâtre du Châtelet has made a specialty of presenting classics of Broadway musical theater. It’s a daring venture, since the French have virtually no direct experience of a thoroughly American style of performance, apart from what they’ve seen in the movies: by now several shows have seen their French premieres at the Châtelet, years after they bowed in New York, and the producers hope to return the favor, with their own adaptation of An American in Paris, opening in November with hopes of a transfer. I’ve seen only one other Broadway show at the theater, Bernstein’s Candide, which — being an operetta based on Voltaire’s novella — at least fell a little closer to the French sensibility. But I missed out on such gems as West Side Story (a monster hit), On the Town, and La Mélodie du Bonheur (a.k.a. The Sound of Music).

The Châtelet’s production of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s The King and I sparked irresistible interest, however, and warranted a trip to Paris: they cast Susan Graham as Anna Leonowens. Susan performed musical comedy in high school and college, but since then she’s specialized in opera, limiting her Broadway rep to Gershwin concerts and the occasional encore number. One knew ahead of time that she’d excel in “Hello, Young Lovers” and “Shall We Dance?” But how would she fare in the less lyrical “Shall I Tell You What I Think of You?” — to say nothing of all that dialogue and the dancing? Even Susan wasn’t sure, when we spoke during an interview for GBOpera.it, last winter.

“Getting to Know You.”

And what, in the very theater where I first saw Susan in Les Troyens, would the French make of something that, despite its Siamese setting and its Welsh heroine, is fundamentally American — with the potential to be as corny as Kansas in August? Would they tinker with it (as they did with Candide)? Would they embrace it?

Under James Holmes’ vital baton and in Lee Blakeley’s tasteful, straightforward production, Le Roi et Moi emerged in all its charm and its occasional bursts of glory earned. If the show’s finale, the death of the King, tends to sentimentality, so be it: all around me, I could hear people — French people — sniffling and crying.* At every level of the production, one sensed a basic respect for the piece itself, and that’s as it should be.

Illustration by WVM.

Blakeley proved more faithful to Rodgers & Hammerstein than he did to Offenbach in his production of La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein at Santa Fe last season, and if he felt the need to update, bowdlerize, or apologize for this play’s East–West and male–female conflicts from their oh-so postwar-American roots, you saw no trace of it. Every word and gesture was rooted in character and plot, and in dialogue scenes he elicited fine performances from a cast that included several non-native English speakers and more than one opera singer.

Jean-Marc Puissant’s sets evoked the grandeur that we (and the French) remember from Hollywood’s King and I, yet with simple, almost abstract means; Sue Blane’s costumes included sumptuous gowns for Susan, sleek silks for the Siamese, and oddly sci-fi armor for the King’s female bodyguards. Peggy Hickey (a Tony nominee, also of Santa Fe’s Grande-Duchesse) provided elegantly understated choreography, then pulled out the stops for a recreation of Jerome Robbins’ “Small House of Uncle Thomas” — and, of course, a delightful “Shall We Dance?”

Lambert Wilson played the King. Not merely a thoroughly bilingual singing actor, he’s a true rarity, a Frenchman who loves Broadway with a fan’s passion and a scholar’s seriousness. (He’s even recorded an album of show tunes.) A veteran of the Châtelet’s Candide and A Little Night Music, he’s prevailed in more challenging songs than anything Rodgers throws at the King: more remarkably, he got through the entire play without ever once making me think about Yul Brynner, making the role very much his own.

Praise to Buddha: Susan and Lambert.

As Tuptim, Je Ni Kim offered charming presence and a lovely soprano voice, opposite the vividly sung Lun Tha of Damian Thantrey (of whose performance not much else could be discerned, because Rick Fisher’s otherwise gorgeous lighting design took “We Kiss in a Shadow” a little too literally). The esteemed Scottish mezzo Lisa Milne, whose work I’ve admired on recordings, nimbly traced the development of Lady Thiang from meekest subordinate to subtlest power behind the throne, culminating in a stirring “Something Wonderful.”

And then there was Susan. She knows exactly what to do with this material, and “Shall I Tell You” turned out to be a high point of the entire show, as she crawled around the floor — in pantalettes — while raging through her chest voice, something she’s seldom called on to use in opera. “I Whistle a Happy Tune” and “Getting to Know You” came out as “bright and breezy” as they’re intended to be, but when “Hello, Young Lovers” and “Shall We Dance?” presented her with opportunities to soar, she seized but didn’t overdo them. The first Anna, after all, was Gertrude Lawrence, not an opera singer.

Perhaps because I worked with an opera singer on another Broadway show, Susan’s skill in dialogue scenes impressed me very favorably: not only landing every laugh line squarely, she used her voice as adeptly as she does in song, bringing out nuance through color, letting us hear all those feelings that the teddibly proper Anna cannot express outright. After all, The King and I endures as something more than a collection of hit songs because it is at heart a love story — in which the principals never speak of or act on their love.

Anna and the King dance their love, however, and Susan moved gracefully (all those Merry Widows add up!) as her hoopskirts swirled and swept about her. This was no slumming opera singer, but an American bringing her native culture to another country, with expertise and affection. The French have showered Susan with honors and awards for her dedication to their culture: the Americans might consider giving her a medal of some sort, too.

I’ve never before taken a picture in a theater, but this was historic. The glowing orb near the center is Susan, in a skirt wider
than she is tall.

*NOTE: I attended the performance on June 17. I’d forgotten — probably repressed the memory — that there’s a reprise of “I Whistle a Happy Tune” during the King’s death scene. Yikes, how mawkish. And yet somehow it worked. It all did. They were smart fellows, Rodgers & Hammerstein.

Read more!

Parisians Now ‘Much Too Polite,’ Tourists Say

Foreign visitors at a Parisian café.

PARIS -- Just a few weeks after another campaign by Paris’ board of tourism designed to sensitize service-industry workers to the needs and preferences of visitors, Paris has become “much too polite” for many tourists.

“We could have been in Muncie,” complained Margaret Velveetinson, of Indianapolis, after a recent trip to the French capital. “Nobody sneered at my accent or the fact that I wanted to eat breakfast at 10 in the morning. Nobody snubbed me. Where’s my authentic Parisian experience?”

Her husband, George Velveetinson, agreed. “I had only one year of French in high school, and that was 40 years ago,” he said. “I thought for sure somebody would make fun of me. But nobody did! Even when I asked them to speak English, they weren’t rude. I want my money back.”

This sudden wave of considerate behavior on the part of Paris’ waiters and hotel clerks is due in large part to the phenomenal response to “Do You Speak Touriste?,” a guide distributed by the board of tourism. It describes the goals and concerns of foreign visitors, and suggests ways that French workers can make a visit more enjoyable for everyone.

These include such helpful hints as serving water with meals when asked to do so, using first names when addressing strangers, keeping wait times to a minimum, and not muttering obscenities in French as soon as one turns one’s back on a tourist.

The cover of the popular guide.

“Before reading this essential brochure, I never understood what a Big Mac or a Coca-Cola can represent to a person who is far from home and seeks the comfort of the familiar,” admitted Jacques Froideur, a waiter at the Café Impertinence, off the Champs-Elysées. “While I understand that, in a café that serves only French cuisine at outrageous prices, I cannot give a tourist precisely what he wants, I now feel a need to be as cheerful and helpful as the counter staff at any fast-food restaurant in the American heartland.

“After all,” Froideur added, “the Americans saved our — how do you say? Asses? Two world wars! And have we ever thanked them properly? It is my duty as a man of honor to make things right in any way I can.”

Previous efforts by the tourism board and other entities have met with limited success. No one expected Parisians to take “Do You Speak Touriste?” to heart — least of all the tourists. An informal survey of visitors from eleven countries found bewilderment and even resentment: Paris is not living up to its reputation. That a city renowned for its art, food, and monuments also be friendly strikes many visitors as unfair.

“What am I supposed to tell the neighbors?” said Jolene Rollerboard, of Little Rock. “That I went to Paris and had a nice time?”

“Next year, we’re going to New York,” said her friend, Mae Belle Samsonite. “I hear they’re really rude there.”

Read more!

News Report: Depardieu Left France Because ‘It Is Sad’

Amazingly, this image is not photoshopped.
(Depardieu appeared on Russian TV with some folk dancers.)

BRUSSELS -- In an exclusive interview with Belgian television, actor Gérard Depardieu this weekend explained the reasons behind his recent, highly publicized decision to exile himself from his native France and to take up residence in Russia, complete with a Russian passport.

Best known for playing extremely large men in dozens of successful films, Depardieu denied that his decision had anything to do with higher taxes under the administration of French President François Holland, or indeed with any “financial reasons.”

“It’s above all the lack of energy,” Depardieu told a reporter from the Belgian Notélé channel. “France is sad, and I think that the French are fed up with it. The lack of conviction … I have the impression that these people [the government] don’t know how to do their jobs.”

Russia is, by contrast, “a very happy place, where everyone in government does his job extremely well,” Depardieu said. “Since I came here, I have seen nothing but happy people, and I like happy people. What’s more, the very highest leaders of the government — up to and including President Vladimir Putin — always have time to take my calls or to welcome me when I drop by for a glass of tea. What a country!”

Depardieu recently purchased a dacha in the village of Potemkin. He expressed some regret that the Russian president has nothing to do with the tasty Québécois dish poutine, though the name is spelled the same in French. However, he said, “I intend to make the best of things, exactly the same as everybody else in this wonderful country.”

Average citizens Depardieu and Putin.

“Really! The finest caviar in the world, and it is everywhere!” Depardieu told the reporter. “People just give it to you by the gallon when they meet you, instead of shaking your hand! And I can hardly take two steps without somebody handing me a Fabergé egg. This makes for an unusual omelette, but I’m getting used to the flavor.”

For several decades, French filmmakers have been required by law (known as “l’exception Gérard”) to hire Depardieu, solidifying his position as France’s largest export by far. As of last year, analysts estimated that he had appeared in roughly 37 percent of all movies ever made in France. He hopes to continue making movies now that he lives in Russia, he says, though roles may be limited due to his lack of familiarity with the language. Some of his other cultural activities may be curtailed, too, he said.

“To give you an example, for many years, as a public service, I have been attempting to prove that there is absolutely nothing wrong with foie gras,” Depardieu said. “I do this primarily by force-feeding myself, precisely as a farmer would force-feed a goose, and as you can see, I have suffered no ill effects whatsoever.”

Read more!

Les Zélections, Part Deux

Le bling, c’est moi.

Socialist candidate François Hollande was widely predicted to prevail in Sunday’s runoff election for the French presidency, and now that the predictions held true, we may not remember just how volatile the race was or how close the incumbent, Nicolas Sarkozy, came to victory. If Sarkozy had been able to pick off more voters from the political center and far right, he could have done much more than narrow Hollande’s already-slim lead.

In the event, the endorsements Sarkozy desired simply did not come. Centrist François Bayrou stopped short of endorsing Hollande — and even characterized the Socialist platform as dangerous — yet announced that, while his supporters should vote their consciences, he would vote for Hollande himself. Bayrou is the sort of middle-of-the-road politician whom everybody respects and yet whom very few actually follow to the polls. Nevertheless, I suspect that most French voters saw the part about “I’m voting for Hollande,” skipped over the part about “His program is dangerous,” and as a result found it difficult if not impossible to believe Sarkozy’s attempts to paint Hollande as an extremist.

The far-right, as represented by Marine Le Pen of the Front National, proved even more challenging for Sarkozy’s campaign. Le Pen refused to endorse or to vote for Sarkozy — she announced that she’d cast a blank ballot rather than support him. Emboldened by an unexpectedly strong showing in the first-round elections, on April 22, she has been thoroughly enjoying her new position as kingmaker/spoiler/insurgent, and it’s hard to find a picture of her anymore where she is not striking a “Don’t cry for me” pose (even though she’s more likely singing the Marseillaise than the score to Evita). French pundits now assert that the FN will fare well in the upcoming legislative elections, and that Sarkozy’s party, the Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, will have to strike all sorts of deals and accommodations with the FN in order to hold onto any kind of power or influence.

One reason Le Pen’s (relative) success was unexpected, is that her partisans historically don’t cooperate with public-opinion surveys. Why would they? Most of the country looks down on the FN, and besides, survey-takers are exactly the sort of establishment drones that the party is fed up with. As he has throughout so much of his career, Sarkozy tried to appeal to the FN, more and more overtly, but in the end he failed to meet his goal.

Co-co-ri-co!
We haven’t heard the last of Marine Le Pen.

What’s interesting is how often Sarkozy has seemed to think he was using a sort of dog whistle in order to communicate with Front voters, as if only they — and nobody else — could hear him when he addressed their favorite issues, notably immigration and nationalism. Yet again and again, even members of his party and high-profile members of his government balked, as they did when the much-vaunted “debate over French identity” threatened to devolve into an orgy of state-sponsored immigrant-bashing.

Sarkozy’s fixation on halal meat, a recurring theme in this campaign, is another example of his attempts to reach out to the FN. If anybody can explain to me why I’m threatened by eating meat that’s been prepared according to Islamic rules, or why it would be so terrible to do so without being told first that I was eating halal, I’m eager to hear it. Otherwise it seems no less healthy than eating Kosher meat — and as for the religious blessings, well, I don’t freak out when Christian friends say grace over dinner, either.

Sarkozy’s campaign made it seem as if there were something insidious about the rising sales of halal food, as if Muslims were somehow stealthily corrupting their neighbors through their meals. When even this tactic didn’t attract sufficient numbers of FN voters, Sarkozy went further, eventually declaring that there are “too many immigrants in France” and calling for changes in border policies and immigration law.

These were hardly the first such appeals he’s made in the course of his career, and to me they’ve always seemed calculated in a way that has less to do with electoral politics and more to do with anticipated but unspoken concerns about Sarkozy himself. After all, his own father was an immigrant from Hungary, and his own wife is an immigrant from Italy. And while Marine Le Pen has steered the FN away from the explicitly anti-Semitic position of her father, Jean-Marie, Sarkozy must have seen some benefit in distancing himself from questions about his own family’s Jewish heritage. Again and again, he strove to make clear that his own background afforded him no special sympathy for families currently in similar circumstances in France.

Paradoxically, however, Sarkozy’s position served more to legitimize what might otherwise have been considered a fringe party. He, as much as Marine Le Pen, made the Front National respectable. By echoing the FN line so often for so long, he made it easier for French voters to side with her — and against himself.

The campaign has provided first-rate political theater, not least including the debate between Sarkozy and Hollande on May 2, in which the candidates’ positions amounted to “You’re a liar!” and “You never take responsibility for anything!”

Others of Sarkozy’s political calculations had an impact on voters across the spectrum, and now that he’s lost the election, it will be easier and more urgently necessary to assess them. What strikes me is that Sarkozy, a Gaullist, shared Charles de Gaulle’s “certaine idée de la France,” one that goes beyond mere patriotism to insist on the country’s role on the world stage. De Gaulle opted to assert France’s influence and exceptionalism by going it alone: breaking ties with NATO and playing the U.S. and the Soviet Union off of each other. But Sarkozy, in a vastly changed environment, seems to have followed a page from Tony Blair’s playbook instead.

According to such analyses, for a smaller power to look like a winner, you must ally yourself with those greater powers who are going to win in any case, with you or without you. And just as Blair tied himself to George W. Bush, so Sarkozy tied himself militarily to NATO (and by extension to the United States) — and economically to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The latter strategy in particular cost him dearly.

Even now that Merkel’s single-minded campaign for austerity has been rebuked by voters across Europe (and in the pages of The New York Times, thanks to relentless criticism from that newspaper’s Nobel Prize-winning columnist, Paul Krugman), she refuses to back down. I daresay that, from the start, Sarkozy spotted Merkel’s intransigence, recognized that he couldn’t win by opposing her, and thus hoped to win by joining her. Never mind that French voters historically have a hard time swallowing ideas they find too “Saxon,” whether the subject is pasteurized-milk cheese or economic policy, whether the ideas come from Germany or from Britain or from the United States: Sarkozy took an exceptional risk.

For a time, the gambit seemed to pay off, and with both of Europe’s largest economies in lockstep, the other nations fell in line — for a while. But Sarkozy’s strategy also made it much easier for Hollande to tap into popular frustration (on both the right and the left) and to call for a break with austerity and a new embrace of growth.

As many American pundits are writing today, Hollande’s policies are thus the antithesis of those promoted by the Republican Party here and in the budget put forth by Rep. Paul Ryan. This doesn’t necessarily mean that Hollande will become Barack Obama’s closest ally, particularly since Hollande explicitly rejects U.S. military policy in Afghanistan and elsewhere, but it does mean that there will be a certain amount of common diplomatic ground in coming months, despite the departure of Sarkozy, who yearned so poignantly to become Obama’s BFF.

I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to say about Hollande, and soon, but for now Sarkozy strikes me as the central character in this drama: after all, it was not least by being “anyone but Sarkozy” that Hollande sailed to victory. In temperament especially, Sarkozy always seemed precisely the wrong person to manage the kinds of reforms that France needs (as he acknowledged, sometimes) and that Hollande will probably duck; the great curiosity is that both Sarkozy’s victories and his failures are so dubious. There will be a lot of mess to clean up in Sarkozy’s absence, and the newly empowered FN is just one of the outgoing President’s legacies with which the nation and much of the rest of Europe will find it difficult to cope.

And the winner is … François Hollande!
Who may soon learn to be more careful what he wishes.

Read more!

On Election Night, Carla Bruni Reads Gossip Magazines

PARIS -- In the aftermath of his historically disappointing second-place finish in presidential elections today, incumbent French President Nicolas Sarkozy addressed supporters from his Union pour un Mouvement Populaire party tonight at the Palais de la Mutualité. Conspicuously absent from the dais and nowhere to be seen in the audience, French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was seen in a laundromat in Neuilly, reading magazines.

These included such popular titles as VSD, Gala, Voici, and Closer, all known for coverage of celebrity gossip, or la presse pipole, as it is called in this country.

Prior to her marriage to the President of the Republic, Bruni was reputed to be perhaps Europe’s most accomplished (and self-described) mangeuse d’hommes, or “maneater,” numbering among her conquests noted celebrities such as rockers Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton, actors Charles Berling and Vincent Pérez, father and son Jean-Paul and Raphaël Enthoven, and a former Prime Minister of France, Laurent Fabius.

“Is Carla here? No? Are you sure?”

“Yes, she was here for about two hours,” laundromat manager Hortense Essorage told reporters. “She just sat there by herself, reading magazines and repeating, ‘I refuse to be the mistress of a nobody.’

“When she left,” Essorage continued, “we discovered that she’d torn out all the pictures of [actor] Brad Pitt, [football player] Cristiano Ronaldo, [swimmer] Camille Lacourt, and [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and taken them with her. Oh, and all the pictures of [U.S. President Barack] Obama, too. I can’t explain it — can you?”

While the race remains extremely volatile, polls indicate that Sarkozy will lose to Socialist candidate François Hollande in the runoff election on May 6.

Read more!

Les Zélections

Mother of mercy! Is this the end of Sarko?

It’s a curious phenomenon: tomorrow, the French will vote in the first round of elections for President of the Republic, and what ought to be my principal preoccupation right now seems as distant to me as the moon. While I’ve managed to glance at the websites for Le Monde and Libération from time to time, and to listen to French radio broadcasts on the Internet, there’s nothing to compare with the constant onslaught of news and analysis of the campaign that I’d get if I were in France now on a day-to-day basis.

These elections are important, however, to the destiny not only of France but of all Europe, and despite the remoteness and the relative dullness of most of the candidates, we really ought to pay close attention.

If French voters construe these elections as any kind of referendum — on the economy, on the current administration, on hot-button issues such as immigration — then President Nicolas Sarkozy is in deep trouble. His aggressive, “American” style, his private life, and his rather skimpy list of achievements during this, his first (and possibly only) term, have dismayed the French, who would like to be rid of him. His principal hope is to appeal to voters’ concerns that any of his rivals would make things worse.

For example, any of the alternatives could mean a major change in France’s status in the European Union, in which Sarkozy has played a significant role in recent years (notably in his close alliance with Germany’s Angela Merkel): in this case, change might mean economic upheaval and loss of political influence, both scary prospects.

Not your father’s xenophobe: Marine Le Pen.

Sarkozy is also courting both moderates (who would ordinarily vote for François Bayrou) and the far right (who would ordinarily vote for Marine Le Pen), whom he’d like to lure away from their respective parties (the Mouvement Démocratique and the Front National), but the catch is that these groups don’t really agree on much, and he’s got much more experience making veiled appeals to the hard right than to the center.

And Marine Le Pen is doing awfully well for herself already. There’s something (almost?) cynical about the way she’s rebranded the FN, long associated with her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. She can say precisely what he said, promoting a xenophobic, ultra-nationalist, radically conservative line, and yet it’s automatically more appealing than it was when her father said it. She’s blonde, pretty — in no way a cranky old man like her dad — and anything she says seems more palatable.

Protest votes for Jean-Marie Le Pen already catapulted him into the second round in 2002, knocking out the Socialist candidate, then-Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, and obliging a broad spectrum of French voters to hold their noses and support incumbent President Jacques Chirac, rather than see Le Pen in the Elysées Palace. The Socialists, in turn, have done a piss-poor job of nominating viable candidates: under the Fifth Republic, only François Mitterrand has won election to the Presidency, and both Jospin and Ségolène Royal, the party’s candidate in 2007, failed to reach far beyond their bases.

Jospin suffered largely because voters wanted to signal their displeasure with his policies as Prime Minister, and because they never dreamed he wouldn’t make it to the second round. Royal was simply ineffectual. And curiously, she spoke so often of her refusal to be beaten (battue) that even the leftist Libération began to speculate about her psychological background, and whether in fact she might have been abused.* Meanwhile, her domestic life fell apart, which was exceedingly awkward, given that her partner and father of her four children was also running her campaign.

That man was François Hollande, who is now the Socialist candidate for the Presidency and who, regardless of his history with Royal, is quite possibly the dullest man in French politics. Frankly, I was surprised that he won the nomination. But given the widespread discontent with Sarkozy (who is, if anything, far too interesting a character) and given the implosion of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (who turned out to be much more interesting than anybody knew), dullness begins to look like a strength. Even the head of the Socialist party, pugnacious Martine Aubry (architect of the controversial 35-hour work week), was too interesting. Hollande took charge, and he’s been polling very well: if he and Sarkozy face off in the second round, Hollande is expected to win handily.

The dullest man in French politics? François Hollande.

He’s had to keep a close eye on his left flank, however, as candidates from smaller parties have gained momentum: notably Philippe Poutou, of the Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste; and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, of the Front de gauche, have excited popular enthusiasm with direct appeals of a kind that Hollande is simply too moderate and too bland to make. Along with Eva Joly**, of the Green Party, these candidates pose a serious risk of splintering the leftist vote and costing the Socialists their best shot at victory in many years.

French law requires that all the parties get a hearing during the campaign, which means that television and radio have been dominated by these characters, ten candidates in all, and this drama. I’m sorry to be missing out on so much of it.



*NOTE: Royal’s father was in the military, and the ensuing speculative construct amounted to a French version of a Pat Conroy novel.

**Joly is a naturalized French citizen, Norwegian by birth. See what happens when you’re not tougher on immigration?

Read more!

Vigne, la Révolution!

Nous sommes les Saint-Pourçain!

We are plucked from the vine when we are still tender, then we are crushed and forced to work for tyrannical overlords.

We are kicked out of our cellars and shipped around the world while they stay home and drink Coca-Cola.

We are made to listen to the idiotic things you say to each other over a glass of wine.

We are made to accompany inferior dishes prepared by substandard chefs.

We are even forced to swallow cheeses made from pasteurized milk.

And then you have the nerve to seize the time slot for our little wine fair in February and hand it over to the Cattle Show.

We are not savages. We are the Saint-Pourçain.

And we are not A-OK.*

Occupons la Foire des Vins!

(Actuellement Foire des Bovins. Merci.)

*NOTE: We are, of course, A.O.C. Thank you for respecting this small but important detail.

Read more!

Carla Bruni Has a Baby

No dream: This is really happening.
The baby is said to have her father’s eyes.

In a development that has absolutely nothing to do with Nicolas Sarkozy’s re-election campaign, Franco–Italian singer–actress Carla Bruni-Sarkozy had a baby girl last night, becoming the first French President’s wife ever to give birth during her husband’s term of office. Bernadette Chirac would have been happy to oblige, of course, but nobody ever thought to ask her.

Analysts in the conservative UMP (Union for a Popular Movement) party are confident that President Sarkozy really is the father. Around the world, celebrations greeted the happy news.

Here’s one such party, in Britain yesterday.

In a curious coincidence (or is it?), at more or less the precise moment the baby was born, Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi, quite possibly President Sarkozy’s all-time least-favorite dinner guest, died. That ought to keep believers in reincarnation busy for at least a couple of decades.

On the bright side, this morning’s news relieves the proud parents of having to invite Qaddafi to the christening.

It’s unclear how many thousands of boys are going to be frustrated when it becomes apparent that Bruni probably won’t look much like this the next time she has her picture taken.

Quelqu’un m’a dit …

Yet again, however, Madame Chirac has a lot of spare time on her hands these days and is probably looking for an opportunity like this. How long before somebody asks her?

But really, this is a time to join the world in wishing the Sarkozys all the best on this happy day. Bonne chance, Sarkozette! It looks as if you’re gonna need it.

Opa! Greeks were celebrating yesterday, too.

Read more!

Promenade Parisienne

Celebrating Napoleonic victories atop the Arc du Carrousel.

MOTS-BIDONS
Chapter 1

Call me Marcel.

Some years ago — never mind how long precisely, except you must calculate it using the metric system — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing in particular to interest me in America, except a great many oafs who mocked me for carrying a purse, I thought I would sail about a little and see the Frenchy part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the digestion.

Whenever I find myself grim about the mouth; whenever it is a dull, desultory Velveeta in my soul; whenever I find myself voluntarily drinking diet soda and low-carb beer, and watching reality television programs, and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically sticking bérets basques on people’s heads — then I account it high time to get to Paris as soon as I can.

Obligatory photo of Notre Dame, but from behind and on the side, where you least expect it.

In all my first trips to the city, I dashed from one tourist attraction to the next. But soon enough, I preferred to conjugate the verb flâner, and to idle along the streets as real Frenchmen do. Today, feeling like a walk, I decide to take my camera. And so I become a tourist again, for I have only one day, and therefore can’t wait for decent light, and I barely know how to use the camera anyway. Several of the stops along my usual route do take me pretty close to the major tourist attractions, too. But so be it. Care to join me?

Morning, at home. From the living-room window of the apartment (six flights of stairs, no elevator), one can see the Montmartre Cemetery, home of Berlioz and Dalida. The dubious expression on my face can be attributed to lack of familiarity with the self-portrait function of my camera.

And so I set out on my walk, looking up the Avenue de l’Opéra at the Palais Garnier in very harsh morning light. Prior to moving to Paris, I’d attended only one performance there — but in the years since, I’ve heard people sing whom I actually know personally. Which is mind-blowing, really.

A corner of the Comédie Française. Just upstairs stands the armchair in which Molière suffered his fatal seizure — onstage, during a performance of Le Malade imaginaire, of all things. For several minutes, no one bothered to help him: everyone thought he was simply giving an unusually good performance that night.

This handsome statue of Molière stands in an elaborate fountain (usually dry) in a side street near the Comédie Française, which evolved out of Molière’s own troupe. The playwright yearned to be taken seriously as a tragedian, and the sculptor seems to have sympathized with him — a little too much. But no author has taught me as much about French behavior. I’d never have survived here without him.

Crossing the Place Colette, I enter the colonnade and arcades of the Palais-Royal. The palace was constructed at the behest of Louis XIII, unhappy in his marriage to Anne of Austria (who was actually Spanish). “Take my wife — please,” Louis said to his prime minister, Cardinal Richelieu. “Majesty, I have just the property for her,” the Cardinal replied, and indeed he did — literally in his own back yard, where it was easy to keep an eye on her. Anne later served as regent until her son, Louis XIV, came of age.

The center of garden of the Palais-Royal is given over to manicured lawns, exuberant flowers, and rather dull statuary. There’s also a lovely fountain at the center.

A chestnut alley in the garden of the Palais-Royal.

No trip to the gardens of the Palais-Royal would be complete without pressing one’s nose up against the window of Véfour, a fancy restaurant with one of the most elaborate interior décors in the city. I’ve never eaten nor even set foot inside there.

The Galerie Vivienne, one of Paris’ best-preserved passages couverts — the forerunner of the modern shopping mall.

In the Galerie Vivienne, some of the wines chez Legrand.

Splashy debut: The door to the Comédie Française lies just behind this fountain.

You wouldn’t think I’d like the entrance to this Métro station, just outside the Comédie Française, but I do: despite my old-fashioned taste, I admire its whimsy and the way the glass globes catch the light. It’s cheery even when it’s raining, and there aren’t many things in Paris about which you can say that.

Stand under the Arc du Carrousel on a clear day (which this was not), and you can line up the obelisk in the Place de la Concorde (twin of Cleopatra’s Needle in New York’s Central Park), the Arc de Triomphe, and far in the hazy distance, the squared-off Arc de la Défense.

The Louvre, with one of its disruptive pyramids. All these years later, and I still haven’t gotten used to them — though they do provide wonderful light in the atrium below.

Not all the art at the Louvre is indoors. Not all of it is any good, either.

Ducks along the banks of the Seine. No, seriously.

“Au fond de la Seine, il y a des morts,” as Teresa Stratas used to say.

From Right (Bank) to Left (Bank): The Musée d’Orsay and the Pont Royal (I think), viewed from the Quai des Tuileries. The d’Orsay, a former train station, houses 19th-century art, including masterpieces of Impressionism and some truly frigid Academic stuff.

Bouquinistes’ stalls along the Seine. I’ve seldom bought anything here, preferring to seek better bargains at used-book vendors such as the colossal, polymorphous Gibert Jeune.

Leering faces look down from the Pont Neuf. Legend has it that they’re caricatures of various courtiers who insisted it was impossible to build a stone bridge across the Seine, predicting the project would be a sort of Swamp Castle. And yet the “New Bridge,” now the oldest in the city, is still standing.

The equestrian statue of Henri IV presides over the western end of the Ile de la Cité, and he looks damned pleased about it, too. “Paris is worth one mass,” he famously remarked, when converting to Catholicism in order to ascend to the throne of France. The first time the statue was refurbished, Parisians found what amounted to a time capsule sealed in the horse’s leg. They replaced the stuff with artifacts of their own era, then sealed it up again and forgot about it until the next time the statue was refurbished. This has become something of a habit as generations ensue.

The Place Dauphine has never looked drearier to me than it did this day. At the western end of the Ile de la Cité, it’s usually a refuge from tourists, shady and calm. Plus, Simone Signoret lived here, which makes the place even more special. Something seems to have happened to the trees here, however, and there’s that harsh light again.

The spires of the Sainte Chapelle. In bright sunlight, the stained glass of the chapel creates truly miraculous transformations — but on those days there’s usually an impossible crowd to get in, and you’re not supposed to take pictures there anyway.

Detail of a Wallace Fountain, hundreds of which dot the Parisian cityscape. They’re a gift from Sir Richard Wallace: bastard, millionaire, art collector, founder of London’s Wallace Collection, and perhaps the world’s ultimate francophile. I daresay he’d disapprove of the fact that I’ve used his fountains to brush my teeth.

The flower market on the Ile de la Cité. Most days, this is an oasis of peace, just steps away from the hubbub of Notre Dame. The exception is Sunday, when there’s a bird market, and the twittering racket disturbs the usual calm.

On the plaza in front of Notre Dame, this impressive statue of the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne stands guard. I see the family resemblance, don’t you?

“Why was I not made of stone, like thee?” Gargoyles at Notre Dame.

A chunk of the old defensive wall, constructed by Philippe Auguste in the 12th century, on the Left Bank opposite the garden of the Cluny Museum.

Marie-Madeleine watches over the courtyard of the Musée de Cluny.

A corner of the courtyard of the Musée de Cluny.

The Roman baths of ancient Lutetia stand on the grounds of the Musée de Cluny, and overlook the crossroads of the original settlement. Visitors aren’t allowed to wander about outside, however, so I settled for snapping this picture through the fence.

The intersection of the Boulevards St-Michel and St-Germain, center of the original Roman settlement of Lutetia and still a bustling hub, millennia later.

The Rue Champollion, named after the fellow who decrypted Egyptian hieroglyphics, is home to three repertory cinemas: the Champo, the Reflet Médicis, and the Filmothèque du Quartier Latin. I can’t calculate how many hours I’ve spent looking at one screen or another here.

Just outside the Cluny Museum, Michel de Montaigne sits thoughtfully. The garden behind him is a bit scraggly, but a convenient spot to hang out while waiting for your next movie in the Rue Champollion, just across the street.

A statue of Dante, near the Sorbonne. Why? Because he taught there — or so it’s said. I wonder what his student-evaluation forms looked like: “This course is Hell!” There’s a Rue Dante nearby, as well, and it’s home to several comic-book shops, of which the old boy might approve.

A detail of the façade of the principal building of the Sorbonne. These fellows have seen some pretty wild goings-on, including riots in 1968 and some heated protest demonstrations even while I’ve lived here.

“Presumed Guilty”: A movie poster outside the Panthéon, where Hector Berlioz is not buried, sends a strange message.

The Luxembourg Gardens. One of the characters in Pierre Capretz’s fondly remembered instructional TV series, French in Action, used to hang out here, trying to pick up girls. He’s not the only one.

Statues of valorous French queens and noblewomen stand around the Luxembourg Gardens. This is Marguerite d’Anjou: “If you do not respect an ordained queen, respect an unhappy mother.” (You may remember her best from a few plays by a fellow named Shakespeare.)

Brilliantly colored flowers grow in the Luxembourg Gardens. By this point, the light is truly terrible, and I’m getting hungry for lunch.

One of the pavilions in the Luxembourg Gardens. Makes you want to paint it, doesn’t it?

After a lunch of salade niçoise and a glass of Brouilly, I pass by St-Julien-des-Pauvres, one of my favorite churches in Paris. One bitterly cold day we took refuge there, while a pianist rehearsed for a recital that night. I gather that the hall can be hired: it’s a popular venue for never-ending “hommages” by younger artists to better-known names, including Callas and Farinelli.

The Ile St-Louis is noted for its doorways. This is one.

Most of the doorways on the Ile St-Louis look more like these, however: sturdy 19th-century shopfronts. The name of the restaurant at left is a reference to a notorious line from the Tintin comics, in which our hero urges a class of African schoolchildren to recite a lesson about “Our ancestors, the Gauls.” (Later editions of Tintin au Congo changed the dialogue.)

My last taste of Berthillon for who knows how long. I opted for one scoop each of sorbet in flavors I love but am unlikely to find elsewhere: fig and grapefruit. The combination was odd, but individually they were fabulous.

On the Right Bank now, the largest extant span of Philippe Auguste’s defensive wall borders a playground.

The garden of the Hôtel de Sully. I have longed to landscape the garden in Beynes this way. It would help if Bernard’s house looked more like Sully’s.

A masterpiece of urban planning: The Place des Vosges.

Arcades along the Place des Vosges. Depending on which side of the square you happen to find yourself in, these arcades may be chic or squalid.

Louis XIII ordered the construction of the Place des Vosges, which began the shift of royal power away from the Louvre and, eventually, away from Paris. You may remember him as the king in The Three Musketeers.

A fountain in the Place des Vosges. The water isn’t potable, which explains why the lions are spitting it out.

Victor Hugo lived in this corner of the Place des Vosges. This picture gives you an idea of the regular, nearly identical façades that line the square.

The garden of the Carnavalet Museum, which serves as Paris’ municipal historical museum and also (to a degree) as the city’s attic. One section of the museum in installed in the former home of Madame de Sévigné, the great prose stylist and luminary of Louis XIV’s court; in another section, Marcel Proust’s cork-lined bedroom has been preserved. The museum is free to the public and open when better-known institutions aren’t.

The seal of the city of Paris, on a gate at the Carnavalet Museum. Why a boat? The Seine made Paris a significant and prosperous port city throughout hundreds of years, though I seldom remember that.

The intersection of one of my favorite streets in Paris (the paved one, as opposed to all the others) and Rue des Rosiers, the main thoroughfare of the Jewish neighborhood in the Marais.

All around the Marais, you can find stone tablets commemorating those residents who were killed in the Shoah — “because they were born Jewish.” This one is in Rue des Rosiers.

The Pletzl, or “Little Square.” In the background on the left is the former site of Jo Goldenberg’s restaurant, scene of a terrorist attack in 1982; today it’s a clothing store.
You may also remember this is as the location where Rabbi Jacob danced, in the worldwide movie hit from 1973.

One of very few expressly Jewish establishments remaining on the Pletzl — or anywhere in the Marais, for that matter. Like New York’s Little Italy, the Pletzl has shrunk steadily, until it covers barely a couple of blocks.

In the Rue François Miron, the house of the Sign of the Reaper and the house of the Sign of the Sheep lend a sense of what Paris must have looked like in the Middle Ages. They’re the oldest private dwellings still standing in the city — or so I seem to recall.

Sens de la Visite: The Hôtel de Sens was the residence of the Bishops of Sens, who had the good sense to live in Paris instead of in Sens. Those boys must have been rich.

Looking up the Rue des Barres, with its cobblestones and old, irregular buildings, I sometimes get the feeling that I’m entering an earlier era.

Another medieval building, on the Rue des Barres.

For political reasons, I ought to dislike the Hôtel de Ville, constructed by conservatives in order to teach the Communards a lesson. But heck, what do you expect Paris’ city hall to look like? A glass box?
I arrived just after “Paris Plages,” in which the banks of the Seine are transformed into a beachfront and the plaza in front of city hall becomes a volleyball court. Now that the summer fun has been put away, the next attractions haven’t been installed — which is unusual. Ordinarily, there is always something going on here, from ice-skating to protest demonstrations. (Naturally enough, since the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville used to be called the Place de Grève, which gave its name to the French word for “strike.”)

This detail, from a fountain adjacent to the Centre Pompidou, will be familiar to anyone who watched the aforementioned French in Action. It’s by the late sculptor Niki de Saint Phalle, and you have no idea how amazed my godchildren are when I explain to them
what “Holy Phallus” means.
In the background is IRCAM, shrine of Pierre Boulez and headquarters of all contemporary music that is too beautiful to listen to.

By now I am pooped and ready for a drink. What luck! Here’s a conveniently located café!
(If Karen were with me, I know she’d be saying, “I want some of those chairs for my patio!”)

The Shop around the Corner, on the Street Where I Live.

Home again, home again: Catching the last rays of the day, the living-room windows beckon me to end my wandering — by climbing six flights of stairs.

Read more!