Following the UK’s election campaign feels soothing for a French political observer. The sight of Britain recovering its senses after years of shambles is a joy like no other; like seeing a dear friend turning a corner after a really bad patch. Meanwhile, France, in a sudden fit of rage, decided to overturn the table. The president dissolved parliament, but it is as if he had dissolved the whole country. And, in return, French voters are playing with the suicidal idea of giving him either a far-right or a far-left majority in the national assembly.
Many voters have already warned that, if confronted with such a stark choice in the second round, they will simply refuse to choose between the xenophobic far-right or the antisemitic far-left alliance, both Putin admirers. While French artists have been eerily silent during this snap campaign, ducking down, refusing to take sides, one man, Kylian Mbappé, rose to the challenge and asked his compatriots not only to vote but to fight the extremes. Asked whether he made any distinctions between the far right and far left, he replied that, non, they were the same to him. “Their ideas are divisive. I’m for ideas that unite.” Liberté, égalité, Mbappé! A few hours later, he was breaking his nose on the pitch; he has since reappeared as a superhero with a tricolour protective mask.
Things falling apart
Three totemic artists have died, adding to the general feeling, especially in France, that an era is coming to a close. First, Françoise Hardy, whose talent, beauty and elegant tristesse fascinated the world. In 2018, I spent an afternoon with her for a profile for the New York Times. She loved literature and sending emails in the middle of the night; she always spoke her mind and didn’t suffer fools. At the end of our conversation, I asked her what was, in her view, the most perfect song. “If I must choose only one song in the whole world, I would choose Charles Trenet’s Que Reste-t-il de Nos Amours?” How fitting.
Two days later, the actress Anouk Aimée, mesmerising in Fellini’s 8½ (and many other films), died. Another French woman, charm incarnate, was leaving us. Her dark eyes, her whispering voice, her fragility… she didn’t have to do or say much for her audience to feel profoundly moved.
And then, on Thursday, we learned of Donald Sutherland’s death. Such a versatile actor, so intense, so sexy in Klute, so charismatic in Fellini’s Casanova. I interviewed him in 2004 when the latter was rereleased in France. He recited Yeats’s The Second Coming in my ear:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Those words have a strange echo in France today.
Up the river
Parisians could be forgiven for having totally forgotten that they will be welcoming the world for the Olympic Games only a month from now. What Games? Oh yes. France’s potential new prime minister, far-right Jordan Bardella, has already warned that he has complete trust in the state for organising them. In other words, he washes his hands of them.
Early birds had a chance to watch a dawn rehearsal of the opening ceremony’s boat parade on a 6km stretch of the Seine last week: 55 of the 85 boats, barges and even pedalos that will be carrying the delegations and athletes. On Monday, another rehearsal is taking place at 6am. See you there?
• Agnès Poirier is a political commentator, writer and critic for the British, American and European press
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