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Carla Bruni, a very modern Marie Antoinette
Peter Allen in Paris29.10.09
France's leading society magazine today produced a devastating portrait of Carla Bruni as the country's new Marie Antoinette.
Point de Vue presents the 41-year-old First Lady as a multi-millionaire socialite who does very little real work and is completely out of touch with ordinary people.
The attack by the Paris weekly, which covers the lives of aristocrats and European royalty, will come as a blow to President Nicolas Sarkozy as he tries to play down his style, which has been derided as monarchical.
He was recently humiliated after trying to parachute his 23-year-old son Jean - known as "Prince Jean" - into a plum job as head of Paris's largest business district.
Now photos of Carla, the president's third wife, have been juxtaposed with paintings of Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France whose high living helped her to the guillotine in 1793 at the height of the French Revolution.
"Same posture, same look, same smile," writes Point de Vue in an eight-page feature, saying both women were infamous for their obsession with designer clothes and physical image.
While Marie Antoinette relied on court artist Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun for her flattering portraits, Ms Bruni gets hers done by American photographer Annie Leibovitz.
The self-obsessed Marie Antoinette would play at being a shepherd at her "play" farm in Versailles, and enjoyed singing and playing the harpsichord.
Miss Bruni also likes spending "country" weekends at Versailles - where she too has use of an official home - and is a pop singer, whose other obsession is psychotherapy, the magazine points out.
Referring to Miss Bruni's most recent TV appearance, Point de Vue says: "At a time when an economic crisis is coming to a head, unemployment is rife, and there are government controversies, the wife of the president prefers to talk in front a camera about her first psychoanalysis session."
Point de Vue said such fads baffled traditional rural French people who expected their First Ladies to be both self-effacing and hard working.
"Equality" is a central tenant of the French Republic, with many believing Miss Bruni, who comes from a wealthy Italian family, represents inherited riches, just like the former Habsburg princess Marie Antoinette.
The magazine says both First Ladies had an air of the "child-woman" about them, constantly "playing" at politics as they advised their husbands.
