“Opération Séduction”

Mark Sampson - Wed 02 Apr, 2008

Nicholas Sarkozy’s glamorous wife helps divert attention from his plunge in popularity

The joke doing the rounds here was that the Sarkozys’ visit to the UK would go well so long as Nicolas kept his hands off the queen.

If Angela Merkel was piqued by his touchy-feely style, how would Her Majesty react to the pint-sized president?

Quite favourably it seems – thanks considerably to his First Lady, whose finishing-school manners tempered his boyish exuberance and prevented any repetition of his predecessor’s 1996 faux pas. “Yes, Nici, it is indeed real class, the royal carriage. So don’t blow kisses and for God’s sake don’t paw the monarch.”

The ex-top modèle played a blinder. “Royales!” trumpeted the Aujourd‘hui en France caption to a photo of Carla and Elizabeth, side by side with their court shoes and their “frock coats and bippety-boppety hats” [David Bowie], clutching their handbags and looking like a pair of dowdy duchesses at a W.I. Gala.

The report of the state visit called it “L’opération séduction du couple Sarkozy à Londres”. Talking to a contact with has her finger on the pulse of “middle France”, it would seem that the journalist was spot on.

“It’s all so calculated,” Corinne told me with distaste.

What: Carla, Sarko?

“Both. Calculated and way over the top. All this talk of a new brotherhood. Of course, he’s right in a way. We have to stick together in the current climate. But suddenly everything British is so fantastic. Just as everything American was when he was sucking up to Bush a few months ago.”

Evidently, she wasn’t seduced, as the British public seemed to be, by the “occasionally monogamous” Madame Bruni-Sarkozy?

“Why did she have to go dressed like a frump? With all her money, you’d have thought that Dior could have come up with something just a little more colourful and… modern. Really, she could have done a little better.”

Well, yes and no. Stylistically perhaps, but strategically she knew exactly what she was doing. She can do Parisian casual and laid-back singer with consummate ease, so dignified dignitary is just another string to her bow. Despite the inopportune publication of the nude photo (“Bloody nice! President Sarkozy is a lucky bloke,” exclaimed Stuart, a middle-aged builder, according to a correspondent at Windsor), she reportedly displayed a “natural grace worthy of Jackie Kennedy”.

Or is she “the French Lady Di” (pronounced La DeeDee)? Corinne likened her to Grace Kelly and La Bruni would surely love a title. (La Montagne reminded her that the Première Dame de France label was purely journalistic.) France Soir described her as looking like a Hitchcock heroine. I thought of Kim Novak in Vertigo, disguised as the hero’s dead wife. Artifice, all is artifice…

But as Gigi 19 wrote in blognaute.fr, “Another story about Carla… Enough already!” Fellow blogger Leopold urged the press to focus more on real issues such as “rising rents and increases in taxe d’habitation” (a variety of council tax). They’re clever and calculating, the couple from the maison bling-bling and Corinne is not the only one convinced that such diplomatic jollies are designed to shift the spotlight from Sarko’s “vertiginous plunge in popularity”.

In the most trenchant analysis of his proposed new “entente amicable”, the evening paper suggested that the visit was part of a calculated move to forge new alliances to counterbalance Germany’s courtship of Eastern European.

So what will become of this “nouvelle fraternité”? Reading how often he used the word “ensemble” in his speech, I’m not convinced. It was the popular catchphrase of his presidential campaign. With the French population now alarmed by inflation and disenchanted by its top table’s ostentatious displays of wealth, I sense a nation less “together” than ever.

Will the “opération séduction” at least help to improve Sarko’s ratings? It certainly hasn’t harmed his wife’s – at least, not in the UK. I know. Enough already. We’re back to La Bruni. She is a source of endless fascination. Personally, I find her sister the more intriguing. Valéria Bruni-Tadeschi recently directed and starred in Actrices: a flawed but audacious film about another kind of theatre.

What was it she said about Carla? “When my sister wants someone, she takes him.” Carla’s every bit as ambitious and calculating as her husband, but there’s always hope for someone who can come up with the pensée: “French people are in a bad mood for some reason, and Italian people are in a good mood”.