THE CARLA Bruni backlash is well under way in France. Critics have dubbed her "the new Marie Antoinette" and condemned the personality cult being created around her by the Elysée Palace, writes Frank McNally.
But as another Bastille Day approaches, her adopted country should be grateful to Ms Bruni for at least one thing. She is maintaining - and if anything extending - France's lead in the league table of Europe's sexiest nations.
Sexiness is as central to the French brand as reliability is to the German one or a talent for clock-making to the Swiss. You only have to combine the adjective "French" with any number of otherwise innocuous words - "kiss", "knickers", "letter", "lieutenant's daughter", etc - to see the extent of the country's success in the area. Along with all France's other advantages, this must be a big part of its attraction for tourists.
But a country cannot rest on its laurels. London, for example, has been challenging the pre-eminence of Paris as Europe's culinary capital - an indirect result of the relative strengths of two country's economies. Elsewhere, the "new world" countries have thrown down the gauntlet on wine. So, although France has no obvious rival yet in the sex-and-romance sector, its market dominance should not be taken for granted.
If there was any danger of its performance sagging, however, along comes Ms Bruni's new album to do for the country's sexy image what the Marshall Plan did for its post-war economy. Short of re-recording Je t'aime as a steamy duet with the president, the Italian-born singer could not have made a more dramatic contribution to her host nation's reputation. Once again, France has again surged ahead of its rivals.
Here's an excerpt from the album's keynote song, inspired by and dedicated to President Sarkozy: "I put an end/ To all my emblems/ To my career as an Amazon woman/ And to my sovereign freedom./ I give you my body, my soul, and my chrysanthemum/ For I am yours/ You are my lord/ You're my darling/ You're my orgy/. . .I who always sought fire/ I am burning for you like a pagan woman."
Phew! No wonder the Elysée Palace is doing so much to promote the album. Already I find myself looking at Monsieur Sarkozy in a new light. And the prospect of his visit to Ireland later this month is suddenly even more exciting than it was, especially in light of his seductive words this week about proposing "a method" by which our problems with Lisbon might be solved.
If anyone can get us to reconsider our initial "No" position, he surely is the man. It's not clear yet whether his proposal will involve us giving up our chrysanthemums. But I predict here and now that, in the event of a second referendum, the bit about him depriving Ms Bruni of her "sovereign freedom" will turn up on Patricia McKenna's new posters.
In the meantime, the Sarkozy visit promises to be like those old Kerrygold ads. Remember the one where the sexy French male teacher comes into the home economics class and asks his Irish female colleague if he can borrow some of her butter? Their eyes meet and the Irish teacher's expression hints that, behind her demure façade, she is burning like a pagan woman. Then the school principal enters and, noticing there's more chemistry in the air than during a double chemistry class, turns the Bunsen burners off, just in time.
Ah yes, they don't make ads like that anymore (perhaps because somebody in the Kerrygold marketing department finally got around to watching Last Tango in Paris and realised that the French-romance-butter metaphor was more risqué than they first realised.)
MUCH AS she seems to have taken to palace life (and even if she has clearly lost her head already) I doubt if Ms Bruni will welcome comparisons with Marie Antoinette. If only in the interests of self-preservation, she might be better to model herself on somebody who survived the revolution, like Josephine de Beauharnais.
The wife of another famous French leader who was diminutive in stature but large in ambition, Josephine only just survived the terror. She was jailed for a period; her first husband was guillotined; and she might have gone the same way had not Robespierre's own grisly end saved her. But survive she did and, together with the Little Corporal, she helped create France's reputation as a country of lovers.
It is, of course, untrue that Napoleon ever said to her: "Not tonight, Josephine." That vile calumny has been traced to a song recorded in 1911, but is otherwise without historical provenance. Probably it was just a piece of English propaganda designed to undermine France's image as a country that was always up for it.
By contrast, one of the many documented exchanges between Napoleon - a man who liked his smells - and Josephine was a famous letter he once wrote, begging her not to bathe for the two weeks before they met again. How romantic is that?
It is true that they divorced eventually. But when she died, he planted violets on her grave, and wore a locket made from the same flowers for the rest of his life. And even as he himself finally surrendered to death, she was close to his thoughts.
His reported last words - cryptic and romantic in equal measure - were: "France. The army. Head of the army. Josephine."