France

Oh, this is splendid. Lord knows when it will be released in Britain, but a trip to Paris in the New Year to see this biopic of the great Serge Gainsbourg might be just the ticket. Here’s the trailer: And, for your additional delectation, here’s Serge performing La Chanson de Prévert:

The Bac began today with, as is traditional, the philosophy paper. Via Charles Bremner and Art Goldhammer, here are some of the essay questions our French friends had to answer: For the Literature Stream: 1) Does objectivity in history suppose impartiality in the historian? 2) Does language betray thought ? For the Science Stream: 1) Is it absurd to desire the impossible? 2) Are there questions which no science can answer? Well, is it absurd to desire the impossible? Have at it, Spectator readers…

As part of an excellent back-and-forth with Daniel Larison on the question of patritism, Noah Millman asks: Can one hold that both Marsall Petain and General de Gaulle were French patriots? I think the answer to this one has to be “yes.” You can’t hold that both were right, but you can believe that both were acting sincerely out of patriotic motives – that both were doing what they felt was best for France as France. I rather agree with this, but would go further and argue that you can hold that both Petain and de Gaulle were right. That is, if one imagines onself as a Frenchman in the

People protest during France’s second nationwide strike in two months, to demand a boost to wages and greater protection form the crisis, on March 19, 2009, in Marseille, southern France. Photo: GERARD JULIEN/AFP/Getty Images It’s springtime which means that even if there weren’t an econmic crisis our friends in France would be taking to the streets. This is as it should be. My one year old godson, I’m pleased to say, is already a veteran of street action, having been wheeled out to protest against proposals for primary school reforms. Even rites of passage happen earlier these days. Anyway, the good news for Sarkozy is that the Socialists are in

Things you never thought you would see: the French government advising against wine consumption… In the midst of the winter gloom, President Sarkozy’s administration  has chosen this moment to tell its people to stop drinking wine. You are hearing right. The Ministry of Health has issued rules for reducing the risk of cancer and one of the main ones is never drink alcohol.  “The consumption of alcohol, and especially wine, is discouraged,” say guidelines that are drawn from the findings of the National Cancer Institute (INCA). A single glass of wine per day will raise your chance of contracting cancer by up to 168 percent, it says. A you might expect, the

This account of how Nicolas Sarkozy wooed Carla Bruni is both amusing and gruesome. For instance: “My reputation is no worse than yours,” he told her. “I know you well without ever meeting you. I understand everything about you … You make love because no one makes love to you. I know everything about you because I am so much you.” With a hush around the table, Mr Sarkozy promised to be in the front row of a forthcoming Bruni concert. “We will announce our engagement. You will see, we will do better than Marilyn and Kennedy,” he told her. Given how matters ended for Kennedy and Monroe, you would

Photo: Keystone/Getty Images Once upon a time Citroen produced the DS – driven here by Lord Hailsham –  as revolutionary and beautiful a car as anyone has produced in the last 50 years. More importantly, it was cool. So, what better way for the marque to make a statement than by reviving the old DS brand? After all, the success of the new retro-styled Mini Cooper and Fiat’s Cinquecento have shown that there’s a demand for cars that look fun and pay homage to the best of their makers’ histories. So how has Citroen fared? Answer: about as badly as could be imagined. I mean, look at this monstrosity, this

There’s something splendid about this. Brent Whelan, an American in Paris, runs, as you do, into yet another demonstration. There was the… sound truck and chants, flags and banderoles, a regular labor action. But I missed the front of the cortège where the leafleters and signs were, so I couldn’t tell what it was about. So I asked a guy on the corner, who told me, “It’s the archaeologists.”  And that’s just who it was: several hundred archaeologists marching down the street, shouting and chanting, demanding that the government withdraw plans to disperse the headquarters of its national archaeological service from Paris. Only, I think, in Paris. And long may this