The moment was pure Hollywood: a beloved actor invites a presidential hopeful on stage and cracks a few fond jokes before lending a little of his star power to the campaign. You've watched this scene many times before, for sure. But this time all the players were in France, where showbiz used to be regarded as at best irrelevant, at worst demeaning, to the serious business of politics.
No longer. The 2007 French presidential campaign, the first led by candidates who grew up in the Television Age and have embraced the Web with a vengeance, is the most thoroughly star-struck political exercise in the nation's history.
So when presidential hopeful Ségolène Royal showed up in the audience of a comedy show starring Jamel Debbouze on February 23, he didn't just shout out a hello, he called on the audience to give a rousing hand to this woman he called "Marie Poppins." Debbouze, the son of Moroccan immigrants, is from a rough Paris suburb. He overcame a childhood injury that left him with a lame right arm and became one of France's most popular and best-paid actors, with a supporting role in "Amélie" (known outside of the US and France as "Amélie from Montmartre") and the lead in this year's foreign Oscar nominee, "Indigènes" or, in English, "Days of Glory." His street cred and celebrity are pure gold for Royal.
But Sarkozy is hard to beat when it comes to dancing with the stars. When he was minister of finance in 2004 he invited Tom Cruise to visit him in his office - along with at least one cameraman. The hoary French rock star Johnny Hallyday has become a card-carrying member of Sarkozy's conservative UMP party. And when French actor Jean Reno ("La Femme Nikita," "Mission Impossible" and "The Da Vinci Code") got married last summer, Sarkozy was a witness. The interior minister also has mugged before the cameras with controversial hip hop artist "Doc Gynéco" -- yes, as in gynecologist - who has become Doc Sarko's most high profile supporter in the 'hood.
At first, Royal hung back. "My stars, they are the citizens, the French people," she said last year. But that didn't exactly grab the media spotlight. So now the Socialist party candidate hangs (in her reserved way) with France's biggest female rapper, Diam's (short for diamonds, or bling). Unexpected support also has come from Geneviève de Fontenay, the aging head of the iconic Miss France committee. She's long been a supporter of the far-left-wing Worker's Struggle candidate Arlette Laguiller. (Can you imagine Miss America's organizer voting Red?) But this time Fontenay is backing the rather more elegant Royal.
Of course, there's always a certain risk of guilt as well as glitz by association. Doc Gynéco once oversaw a massive three-day erotica trade show where visitors perused sex gadgets and "intimate jewelry." And the quick-witted, improvisational Jamel is famous for catching viewers off guard. He certainly surprised Sego when he asked whether, as president, she would decree that a paparazzi photograph taken of her in a bikini on the beach last year be "put up in all of France's police stations." Stars, sometimes, may shine just a little too bright.
Photo of Jamel Debbouze at Cannes Film Festival by AFP
