Posts from — March 2009

As my friend Marc Cogan commented in the previous post, the recent general strike had as its unofficial slogan Sarkozy’s comment, although this time directed back at him, “Casse-toi, pauv’ con” – “Bugger off, you sorry asshole.” Around two-thirds of the marchers were wearing this slogan in some form, and Marc managed to get a photo of one of them, wearing it stuck to her hair.

Statistics I heard on Radio France this week may help to put this in some context: over two million (7.8% of the population) are now unemployed in France, with youth being the hardest-hit demographic. This is much higher than in Australia, where we have over half a million, or 4.8%, unemployed.

(by guest blogger Marc Cogan)

Last Thursday’s general strike and supporting march were big successes, both from an organizational perspective, and as spectacle. Even the weather had already chosen sides, as the newspaper Libération, said, and it was sunny and warm throughout France. The weather swelled the crowds and buoyed their spirits.

The parade was much longer than at the equivalent march in support of the January strike. The organizers were a little cannier, too. There’d be a lull in the marchers, and you’d think, “Ah, that must be the end of it.” But no, all of a sudden new marchers would appear, in large numbers and dense ranks. Parade marshalls were stopping marching groups and holding them while others turned up, concentrating their numbers, and giving a new impetus to the line.

There were groups of every sort, and for every interest and taste, from the always present Lycée Darius Milhaud, to the Cinémathèque nationale, which may not have had the best sign, simply a hand-scrawled ‘Cinemateque francaise en grève!’, but had its own marching band.

There were marchers from Radio France International, protesting cutbacks and ministerial incomprehension of their mission of teaching languages, and especially of spreading France throughout the world.

And then there was a most unlikely labor unit, the public statisticians. Energy levels were high, and I was struck by how much these young people reminded me of the revolutionaries in Delacroix’ Liberty Leading the People as young marchers swept through the Place de la Bastille passing in front of the July Column commemorating that very revolution. Over it all, the Genie of Liberty seemed a benign inspiration, accompanied by this cheerfully low-tech balloon leaflet distribution system.

But behind the public display, there was an edge to this manifestation that had been missing from the January strike and demonstration. The world economy has worsened, and France is coming to recognize that as budget cuts hit home. The unofficial slogan of the January march—worn as a sticker by a good two-thirds of the marchers—was the punning and almost hippy-ish “Rêve générale.” At Thursday the 19th’s march the all-but-official slogan (it appeared on full-size posters as well as on stickers worn by the marchers) had a new, bitter edge. It was Sarkozy’s comment from last year’s agricultural salon to the man who said, when Sarko was working the crowd and extended his hand to be shaken, “Don’t touch me.” Sarko replied, without any hesitation: “Casse-toi, pauv’ con”—“Bugger off, you sorry asshole.”

In the past few days I’ve seen two French films, both starring Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi. She’s not an actress to whom I’ve paid much attention in the past, but in these films—Actrices and Le Grand Alibi, Bruni-Tedeschi played such entirely different characters, and so convincingly, that I became utterly captivated. How anyone can go and see anything like Bride Wars, when there is other, so much more sustaining cinematic fare, I do not know.

Actrices is about a lonely actress Marcelline in her forties, thinking she might be about to experience the end of her fertility, and lose the chance of having a child. This drama is played out side by side, or on top of, really, the other literal drama of her playing the role of Natalya in Turgenev’s A Month in the Country, a woman who manipulates others to get what she wants.

Le Grand Alibi is a retelling of an Agatha Christie story, and much less psychologically complex than Actrices, but satisfying also in its own way, especially if one likes thrillers.

And of course there is the added frisson of knowing that Valeria is the elder sister of Carla, France’s first lady.

I’d just had an excellent lunch with my landlady and her son at a restaurant quite near our apartment block in the 12th–Le Cotte at no. 1 rue de Cotte (corner of rue de Charenton). The son was about to get a velib to cycle home, when his mother declared she wanted a photo. He suggested I hop on the velib. Now, I haven’t mounted a bike for many years, and was quite terrified. But I was even more terrified of appearing the gauche Australienne. So using muscles in places I wasn’t even sure existed any more, I somehow managed to perch myself on the saddle while N gallantly held the bike still. I’d like to think I look French, but I’m not sure…