Is French flattery of stars just holding on to the past?

The age of flattery that flourished at the court of Versailles was supposed to have ended when the tumbrils rolled in the Revolution 200 years ago, but Hugh Schofield wonders whether it really did.

It was the films that got me thinking.

Once a month or so, I manage to overcome my reservations and go back and watch one of the new releases from the production factory which is French cinema.

And every month I emerge numbed and exasperated and vowing never, ever to go through the experience again.

Take one picture I saw recently - which unsurprisingly has not made it beyond French shores - called Le code a change (The Code Has Changed).

It was supposed to be a bitter-sweet comedy of manners dissecting the lives and loves of a group of invitees to a dinner party.

What we got was two hours of inconsequential, plotless twaddle, all set in a world suspiciously similar, one suspects, to the one inhabited by the director and her close friends, but not by anyone else outside of the Paris in-crowd.

Or take the comedy Le Vilain (The Villain) which has just come out. It is billed as an offbeat caper in which a bank robber takes refuge with his mum, only to find that she is a bit of an odd'un herself.

It had some well known actors and the cinematography was no doubt exemplary, but my 14-year-old daughter and I both agreed, on emerging, that there was one minor drawback: it wasn't funny.

'Obsequiousness'

Now having a go at French film is an easy game so that is not the point of this essay.

My point is that - in both these cases - what we had been led to believe was that these films were actually pretty remarkable.

It was not just the listings magazines or the internet puff sites that gave them a big hand. It was the serious critics in Le Monde, Le Figaro and elsewhere, who used adjectives like hilarious, tender, burlesque, complex, original.

In fact, when one looks around, one realises that there is an unusual level of flattery - one might even say obsequiousness - in French public life, especially when it comes to culture.

If you have ever watched French television, you will get the picture.

A typical mid-evening programme is a chat show on which the invitees are members of the small, unchanging - and therefore ageing - club of national celebrities.

Behind in rows of seats, a youthful audience hand-picked for telegenic good looks bursts into applause at every anecdote or hackneyed clip from the archives.

At the more serious end of the market, the annual literary season is in September, when there is a rush of new publications and the big book prizes like the Goncourt are announced.

Here, too, listening to the reviews is like being beaten about the head with a powder puff.

Nothing is ever mediocre, let alone bad.

Everything is uplifting, exquisite, crafted, delicate, challenging, or that most irritating of French words: "engage", which means "committed", though to what is never spelled out.

One could take this further and look at the way politics too is infected by the sycophancy bug.

Conservatism

Certainly as far as the presidency is concerned, there is never any shortage of what the French call flagorneurs which means toadies or, more obscenely, leche-culs (lecher means to lick).

Nicolas Sarkozy may be reviled by the Paris intelligentsia - which he is - but at the Elysee, so they say, his biggest problem is the yes-men who only tell him what they think he wants to hear.

So what is this all about?

Is it all just a relic from the ancien regime : those lower down the pecking order fawning on those above?

Well, up to a point.

Actually, when it comes to French culture, I think it is more complicated.

The French collude in the over-praising for two reasons, one good, one bad.

The good reason is that they are genuinely fond of their culture. I may not have found Le Vilain funny, but a lot of people in the audience were in stitches.

One realises after a while that the French view their stars almost as members of the family. They enjoy going to see them in the same way they enjoy catching up with the latest family gossip.

That kind of conservatism is actually quite refreshing after the brutal neophilia (the constant need for the new and the culling of everything that is familiar) that one associates with British culture.

The bad reason is that it is all about self-protection.

Succumbing to sycophancy, after all, is a way of reassuring oneself that all is good in the world, when clearly it is not.

Seen like that, the French are merely deluding themselves that their culture matters the way it once did: sticking their fingers in their ears, if you like, and whistling to Johnny Hallyday.

In Paris, the customer is not always right

The idea of service is taken very seriously in France where any feeling of subservience is strongly resisted, as Emma Jane Kirby discovered.

Paris is in a bad mood.

The sullen, steel-grey sky seems to be permanently snivelling sleet.

The Seine, swollen against its banks, pushes and squeezes its way through the city like an irascible woman in too-tight shoes.

And the January depression has even sucked some of the glitzy dazzle out of the Eiffel Tower, leaving it looking - at least from a distance - like a rather cheap, left-over Christmas decoration.

It may be the city of romance and a Mecca for tourists, but right now Paris feels and looks like it just cannot be bothered any more to turn on the charm.

Not that this city is exactly known for its sense of service.

The customer is allegedly always right in London but, in Paris, he or she is little more than an irritant.

Cab 'service'

A couple of months back, I broke my leg in a skiing accident and became completely reliant on Paris's taxi service.



Wobbling precariously on my crutches after a family dinner in a local restaurant, I hailed the first cab in the rank.

He drove up, glanced at my plastered leg and drove straight off again shouting: "I don't take cripples. Your crutches might damage my paintwork!"

Somewhat stupefied, I hailed the next cab in line and politely asked the driver if I could sit up front as it was easier for my leg.

"I'm not arranging my whole damn cab to accommodate you," he snapped. "I've got all my personal things piled on the front seat!"

As he drove off at an angry speed, I got a glance of the front passenger seat and saw it was adorned with one folded newspaper.

The taxi driver who finally chauffeured me home was pleasant enough, although a stark notice on the back of the seat reminded me that it would not be wise to push my luck.

"Do not use your mobile phone in this cab," warned the hand-written sticker, "it annoys your driver."

Under the circumstances, even though I was paying for this ride, I felt unable to ask this clearly sensitive man to turn down his deafening rap music.

'I'm not your slave'

The fact is Parisians employed in any service industry simply do not buy into the Anglo Saxon maxim, "He who pays the piper calls the tune."



The revolution of 1789 has burned the notion of equality deep into the French psyche and a proud Parisian finds it abhorrently degrading to act subserviently.

This Sunday, a Parisian friend of mine waited in line at the fruit and vegetable stall of his local market.

When it was his turn to be served, he asked the seller for a kilo of leeks.

"They're at the other end of the stall," snapped the vendor waspishly. "Take a bit of exercise and get them yourself."

There is no mistaking the undertone, "I'm not your slave."

At my doctor's, the two dour receptionists are quite delightful when we meet on the street, sharing jokes and asking kindly after my broken leg.

Back behind their desk, however, they brood and scowl. There is not even a gesture of recognition, let alone a friendly smile.

On the street it is acknowledged that we are equals but, once back in the surgery - in that uncomfortable position of service provider and client - the receptionists become wary of a potential shift of power and are quick to squash any assumptions of superiority.

Blunt honesty

In America, your waiter comes to your restaurant table to tell you his name is Joe. Here, your waiter expects to be addressed formally as Monsieur, in exactly the same way he will address you.

It is made clear from the start that no-one has the upper hand. The strict code of manners in Paris is a deliberate class-leveller.



Perhaps Parisians are just being honest.

Our American waiter Joe, after all, only promises to give us "good folks a great time" because he wants a terrific tip but, in Paris, providing quality is a matter of personal pride.

In the boulangerie next to our office, the baker spends a good 90 seconds skilfully wrapping up my plain brioche into an artistic cornet, even though she must know I will rip it open the second I leave her shop.

When I ask the local greengrocer for an avocado, he asks when I plan to eat it before dutifully feeling every avocado in the box to find the one which will be perfectly ripe on that day.

Last week, as I waited in the damp gloom for a taxi to take me home after yet another hospital appointment, I decided to shelter in the expensive dress shop next door.

I held up a woollen dress against me and admired myself in the mirror.

The shop assistant, nonchalantly blowing bubble-gum bubbles, looked narrowly at me and shook her head.

"Don't even think about it," she said bluntly, "not with that big fat leg."