What’s left for Carla Bruni-Sarkozy? Heiress, supermodel, pop diva, Queen of France. Now everyone’s mind is on her chrysanthemum.
 
Follow Jane Birkin to Serge Gainsbourg to Citizen Kane to find it’s French for Rosebud.

In reprising her recording career, Mrs. France now wants Jane Birkin’s repute. Her album As If Nothing Happened is a Je T’aime Moi Non Plus remake for our Gattaca millennium, antiseptic, callous, Birkin’s expressive orgasm gone the way of pubic hair.

In her song Ta Tienne, Bruni pledges to her president husband “I give you my body, my soul and my chrysanthemum” encrypted for state security reasons perhaps. France-soir says: “I think we know exactly what she means by this. It is hardly appropriate imagery for a First Lady of France.” I think I do too, although I’m determined to imagine the allusion is literary and not botanical.

Coincidentally, the similarly named Euro-trash film Je T’aime Moi Non Plus which Birkin made for her husband, eminent enfant-terrible composer Serge Gainsbourg, also the song’s composer, centered around costar Joe Dallesandro’s incapacity to be aroused by anything but her delicate rosebud.

How does Bruni’s inability to sing compare to Birkin’s? Definitely comparable. But her artlessness soars. Birkin’s long career included showing herself to be a critically acclaimed film director. The French First Lady’s artifice is calculated like Faust.

I remember when Carla Bruni hit the public scene. The old Italian money heiress merited a topless photo blurb in Vanity Fair, no doubt arranged by PR reps because the caption credited the bohemian scion with no distinction besides reading Kant in her skivvies. From there it was fashion model, then groupie, then pop singer apparently, until she landed the ultra-right European Union enforcer hit-man Sarkozy for a husband. The press pretends her leftist circles don’t understand the attraction.

Wealthy Italians have been fascists since the Medici. Where did Carla get a leftist rep? That’s like expecting a physicist to emerge from shop class. In marrying Sarkozy I think the dilettante has shown her social-climber colors, and this lamentable recording puts a finer, and I’m sure it’s lovely, point on it.

We might argue the anatomical nomenclature, in any event the distinction’s a pun. Carla shows her man-eating reputation is undaunted by the French dictator. If she’s meant to be upstaged by an asshole, it’s going to hers, fragranced.