Film poster featuring two men kissing "too upsetting" for some

Shocking isn't it.

A poster showing two men kissing!

And they're not even "real men".

Rather they're two figures designed by illustrator Tom de Pékin to promote the film "L’inconnu du lac" ("Stranger by the lake") which won Alain Guiraudie the prize of Best Director in the category Un Certain Regard at the Cannes film festival in May.

screenshot of poster

The film, which tells the story (you can read a review in English by Nicolas Bell here) of a "torrid summer affair" between two men at a cruising spot for gay men next to a lake, goes on general release on June 12 and it appears the posters are too much for two town halls close to the French capital.

Authorities in Versailles and Saint-Cloud have both asked for them to be withdrawn and the company owning the billboards on which they had appeared, JCDecaux, has duly taken them down.

Well that's how it's being reported although nobody is talking about censorship - apart from the minister of culture, Aurélie Filippetti -  attributing it rather to not wanting to offend sensibilities.

You see Versailles and Saint-Cloud could be caricatured (kindly of course) as the heartland of a certain type of bourgeois Catholicism in France: where the girls wear Alice Bands and the boys are Scouts.

They're also the kind of places where you might expect to see plenty of clones of France's most gay-friendly parliamentarian Christine Boutin.

Apparently "concerned" residents have been calling, emailing and even - horror upon horrors - turning up at the town hall in Saint-Cloud to express their "distress".

Over in Versailles, where the authorities deny there was a formal request to take down the posters, the director of communications admitted that they could "shock those who found themselves helpless in the face of posters that address sexuality in the street".

All right, fess-up time. It's probably not just the kiss (although that's upsetting and unnatural in itself of course) which has caused a mini brouhaha.

Instead it's the - and you might have to take a good ol' squint at the image to spot this - the  representation of two men in the background apparently engaged in (cough, cough) oral sex.

François Hollande's "gender parity" government? Yes and no

The gloves are off in the battle for control of the centre-right Union pour un mouvement populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) party, and former justice minister Rachida Dati has chosen to throw her two centimes-worth into the ring.

No, she hasn't exactly declared herself a candidate for the post, which will be decided at the party's conference in November but, in her usual candid style which leaves the door wide open to interpretation, hasn't denied her interest in the job either.

"Why not?" she replied when asked the question recently in a radio interview.

"Collectively there are several of us. So why not?"

Hmmn most revealing, isn't it?

Was she talking about several women joining forces to lead the party forwards?

Or perhaps she was borrowing something from the more diplomatic proposals from a former prime minister and current Mayor of Bordeaux Alain Juppé that there should be some sort of joint presidency to prevent infighting splitting the party.

Anyway, with Dati's arch enemy and former prime minister François Fillon having already announced he's standing and the party's current secretary general Jean-François Copé clearly in campaigning mode, November looks as though it could be a real handbags at dawn affair.

As for Dati's precise intentions? Well remember this is (French - although it's probably not so different elsewhere) politics where allegiances are built on the proverbial shifting sands and personal ambition often rides roughshod over ideology or the common good.

So Dati, although equally as firm in her support for Copé as she is for her dislike of Fillon,  probably wouldn't mind positioning herself for a run at the Really Big One if the opportunity presented itself, is keeping her options open.

The most prominent element missing from any party battle in November will most likely be exactly what Dati and many other female politicians bemoan - the presence of a woman in the race.

Ah yes. Women in French politics - they get a pretty rough deal.

How many can you name for example (without resorting to Google)?

From the Socialist party, which currently holds all the country's major offices, how many come to mind immediately apart perhaps from the usual high profile suspects such as Ségolène Royal and Martine Aubry.

After that it gets kind of tough doesn't it?

And what about that apparent balance between men and women in the government, so highly touted by the French president François Hollande and his (male - just in case you needed reminding) prime minister Jean-Marc Ayrault?

Family photo - Jean-Marc Ayrault's first government (screenshot BFM TV)

Oh yes there's the same number of men (19) and women (19) and many have held that up as an example of Hollande succeeding where his predecessor, Nicolas Sarkozy, so obviously failed.

But, as has also been pointed out several times, the jobs haven't exactly been shared out equally when it comes to the pecking order.

Take a look at the so-called "top jobs" (for want of a better expression) for example; the foreign minister - Laurent Fabius, the interior minister - Manuel Valls, the defence minister - Jean-Yves Le Drian and goodness, the justice minister - Christiane Taubira. A woman!

One out of four. Not bad.

Certainly ain't real parity though, is it?

Clearly there weren't enough qualified women to go around for those positions.

Marisol Touraine (social affairs and health), Aurélie Filippetti (culture and communication) or Delphine Batho (ecology, sustainable development and energy) certainly aren't going to kick up a stink about the portfolios they've been given at some equally important but arguably less prestigious ministries.

But Ayrault (and Hollande) surely limited their choice by plumping for women who were parliamentarians - from the National Assembly or the Senate.

And therein lies part of the problem for any real gender parity in government - at least in France.

The last election returned the highest number of women to the National Assembly the country has ever seen.

That's the good news folks.

But when you look at the actual figures, you discover a different story.

Of the 577 députés, a whopping 155 were women.

All right that was up from the 109 of the 2007 elections but it still only accounts for 27 per cent of those elected to the National Assembly.

Progress - very slow progress - which will see France rise from 70th in a table of women members as a percentage of the total number present in the country's lower house to 36th - nestled just between Afghanistan in 35th and Tunisia in 37th.

Still at least that's better than the UK down in joint 55th with Malawi.

Maybe there's something after all to the much-quoted comment by the late journalist and politician Françoise Giroud that there'll only be real gender parity in politics when "a woman is appointed to office on the basis that she is just as incompetent as a man."


Les nouveaux ministres posent pour la photo de... par BFMTV

EDF's Henri Proglio - the man with a Fat Cat salary

....and two jobs

It might only have been worth a one-liner in the middle of the broadcast on TF1's prime time news on Tuesday, but confirmation that Henri Proglio, the recently-appointed big cheese at the French utility giant, Electricité de France (EDF) would in fact be receiving a double salary, has nonetheless created the expected polemic here in France.

Nominated as president of the company last November, Proglio was officially named CEO on Wednesday and with the job comes a modest annual salary of €1.6.

But that isn't the only monthly income the 60-year-old will be able to enjoy because he'll be retaining a position in his previous company, the French multinational Veolia as chairman of the board for which he'll rake in another €450,000 annually.

Yes that's right. The man will be earning a cool €2 million a year because "He has two responsibilities and, therefore two salaries," as the minister of the budget Eric Woerth explains.

"And in reality, the sum of salaries is equal to what he earned before, so he (Proglio) hasn't actually had an increase in income," Woerth maintains.

The argument put forward by both Woerth and his government colleague, the finance minister Christine Lagarde, to justify why the government supports the double salary, and that Proglio is worth every cent he's going to be paid runs along the lines of stressing that it's not really that much money when you make a direct comparison with other countries.

"The salary is well behind that being paid to those in German, Italian or British-owned rivals," says Lagarde.

"And when you look at the earnings of those heading companies quoted on the CAC 40 it only puts him in 18th or 19th place."

But wait, what did Lagarde say back in November when Proglio was nominated for the job?

Ah yes something very much along the lines of there being "no question of overlapping of remuneration and therefore he would receive a single salary."

While government ministers have defended the double salary, perhaps the last word on the subject (for the moment) should be left to Aurélie Filippetti, the national secretary of the opposition Socialist party, who probably sums up best what many of those who don't agree with the move have been expressing.

"The combination of mandates, whether in politics or business, is definitely a very bad tradition in France," she says.

"Mr. Proglio presides over the destinies of two groups with a total of nearly 500,000 employees and combined sales of more than €100 billion," she continues.

And when it comes to the claim that the "best" need to be rewarded for the jobs they're doing, Filippetti doesn't mince her words.

"We can no longer bear to hear this completely fallacious reasoning," she says.

"What exists is actually a very exclusive club of privileged people who designate each other to positions of power as though they were playing musical chairs just like the Ancien régime."