Carla Bruni to hit the big screen?

Isn't it just the news you've been waiting for? France's first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, is rumoured to be set to appear at a cinema near you sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Well that's if the Spanish national daily newspaper El Mundo is to believed.

It claims that the wife of the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, has accepted an offer from the US director Woody Allen to appear in his next movie which begins filming in 2010.

But according to the French daily, Le Parisien, it's far from being a "done deal" with unnamed "members of her entourage denying that she has been signed up by the US director."

Speculation of a possible role for Bruni-Sarkozy in Allen's next movie has of course been rife since June, when the 73-year-old director was in Paris to promote his most recent film, "Whatever works".

During and appearance on the mid-evening television news magazine "Le Grand Journal" on Canal +, Allen was full of praise for France's first lady.

"I would love to work with Carla Bruni, he said.

"She's an accomplished artist, very beautiful and I'm sure she has a gift for acting," he added.

"I would really like to offer her a role in my next film and what's more I promise that her participation wouldn't create any embarrassment for the president or the image of France."

Should Bruni-Sarkozy - and it's probably still a might big "should" in spite of the story in El Mundo - really have accepted Allen's offer, it wouldn't be the first time she'll have appeared in a film.

She has been seen on the big screen before, albeit briefly and playing herself in the 1994 fashion satire "Prêt-à-Porter" ("Ready to wear") directed by the late Robert Altman.

And acting is certainly in her blood. Her mother, Marisa Borini, as well as having been a concert pianist has also appeared in several films.

And of course Bruni-Sarkozy's older sister, Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, is an accomplished film, television and theatre actress and director.

So after modelling and singing (who can forget the hullaballoo that accompanied the release of her third album just months after her marriage to the French president? If you're curious about that and want even more coverage of her musical exploits it's all here) could Bruni-Sarkozy now be ready for the big screen?

Perhaps more importantly, are the French ready to see their first lady slip into a new role as a performer or would it be, as the entertainment and celebrity news site Purepeople.com puts it, simply be "too much"?

War of the roads over a one-way Paris street

Thank goodness for the prefect of the suburban Parisian département of Hauts-de-Seine, Patrick Strzoda, and the rest of his administrative team.

They've put an end, albeit temporarily perhaps, to a dispute between two neighbouring mayors within the département; a quarrel that had threatened to create havoc for local residents and businesses as well as rush hour commuters, and indeed proved to be the case on Monday.

That's when motorists using the Route Départementale 909 (RD 909) that runs through the communes of Levallois-Perret and Clichy found themselves faced at one point with one-way signs pointing in opposite directions.

Gilles Catoire the Socialist mayor of Clichy decided that as of August 31, the section of the RD 909 passing his commune would become a one-way road in the in the direction north-south.

It was a reaction to a decision made by Patrick Balkany, the centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire (Union for a Popular Movement, UMP) mayor of the neighbouring commune of Levallois-Perret, to make the stretch of the same road that ran through his municipality one-way but in the opposite direction (south-north) on the same day.

The result on Monday was the inevitable absurd situation for motorists as they arrived at the point where the two sections of the road met...with one-way signs in place literally face-to-face preventing them from continuing ahead.

Instead police were on duty to redirect traffic to another street to avoid the newly-installed one-way systems which were causing near gridlock, testing nerves and of course generally adding to the woes (as well as journey time) of the nearly 20,000 vehicles that pass through the particular intersection every day.

Chaos had of course been on the cards for several weeks ever since Balkany announced his decision in an effort to decrease the amount of traffic passing along the Levallois stretch of the RD 909.

Catoire, fearing it would see a surge in congestion on the Clichy portion of the road, had threatened to retaliate with a tit-for-tat move, although to give him his due he did make the offer to Balkany to suspend the decision if his Levallois counterpart did the same.

Neither of course backed down and it was only after a morning of predictable mayhem that a "higher authority" in the shape of the prefect of Hauts-de-Seine, who presumably had a somewhat wider view on how everyone might be affected, put an end to the wrangling and suspended both newly-installed one-way systems.

So the status quo has been re-established - but for how long?

Watch this space.

The French postcard that took 72 years to arrive

Lame excuses - at one time or another we must all used have used them to try to wriggle our way out of an uncomfortable situation with something, that even to our own ears, sounds rather as though it's bordering on the preposterous.

Perhaps that's how a young man felt back in 1937 when he sent a postcard to his fiancée in Monaco from the mountains of Saint-Etienne-de-Tinée in the department of Alpes-Maritimes in southeastern France.

The distance, as the crow flies, 103 kilometres.

But of course crows don't deliver and the postcard had to go through a sorting office in the southern French city of Nice.

The postal service at the time probably wasn't up to modern day standards, but there again likely as not neither was the volume of mail, but but Fernande Robéri, an apprentice hairdresser at the time, never received the card.

And how do we know? Well, it has turned up - 72 years after it was sent.

The postcard apparently arrived at the post office in Monaco last week from the sorting office in the nearby French city of Nice.

Dated 11 August 1937, it had been sent by a certain J.A Achierdi to his fiancée with the less-than-brief and certainly far-from-romantic greeting "Bon souvenir".

It seemed to have made the 89 kilometres from Saint-Etienne-de-Tinée to Nice with the minimum of delay, but the same cannot be said for the final 20 kilometres to Monaco.

"The only explanation is that the card somehow fell behind a desk or a piece of furniture at the sorting office," said the director of the post office in Monaco, Jean-Luc Delcroix, which for sure let's the postal service off the hook.

Sadly Fernande Robéri will never know either the length of time the postcard took to arrive or the way her fiancé had with words. She died in 1969.

But on Tuesday, the card will finally be handed over to a member of her family - 72 years after it was sent.