Carla Bruni, the singer-model wife of President Sarkozy, is to make her debut as an actress in a film directed by Woody Allen.
Ms Bruni, 42, confirmed that she had accepted an offer from Allen, one of France’s favourite film-makers, during his trip to Paris last June. The New York director said of Ms Bruni: “She has charisma and she performs, so she’s not a stranger to an audience.”
Ms Bruni, who married Mr Sarkozy early last year after a two-month romance, talked of the plan on a television show in which she sang the Beatles classic And I Love Her with Harry Connick Jr, the American singer-pianist. The track has been released on his new album.
Ms Bruni also laughed off a recent episode of the television show The Simpsons in which she was caricatured as a wine-swigging vamp. “Woody Allen kindly asked me not to do a film with anyone else before him. If anything concrete ever comes of it it will be a great experience for me,” she said. “I go into everything blindly or I’d never do anything at all.”
The Italian-born former model has only been glimpsed in one film before, when she played a model in Prêt-à-Porter, Robert Altman’s 1994 movie about the Paris fashion scene. “I am not an actress at all,” she told Canal+ television. “Perhaps I will be completely hopeless, but I can’t miss an opportunity like this one. When I’m a grandmother I’d like to be able to say I made a film with Woody Allen.”
Ms Bruni said that the project remained vague. Allen, who has raised the finance for three of his last four films in Europe, is aiming to shoot his next comedy in Paris next year. The film-maker was recently reported by industry sources to have been seeking financial aid from France for the production.
If the film goes ahead, Ms Bruni’s part is certain to be vetted by Mr Sarkozy’s image-managers. Since their marriage, the formerly free-living Ms Bruni has set out to project a more demure image.
She has released an album and sung on British and American television, as well as at a charity concert in New York this year.
On Monday, a mysterious buyer saved Ms Bruni’s dignity by buying a nude portrait of her that had failed to meet the ¤5,000 (£4,500) reserve price at a Paris auction the week before.
The picture, by Michel Comte, went for €6,000 — a fraction of the $91,000 (£55,000) that was paid for another print of the same photograph in New York last year. Internet sites speculated that friends of the French couple may have bought the picture.
Ms Bruni, who hails from the gauche caviare — the rich, left-wing Paris set — has toned down her public remarks lately after causing her husband embarrassment on matters such as his immigration policies.
Her sulphurous former image as thegirlfriend of rock stars and celebrities was mocked by The Simpsons on November 15 when she and Mr Sarkozy made a brief appearance in an episode in which Homer Simpson visits Paris.
A clip from the episode, called The Devil Wears Nada, became an internet hit in France. In it, the Bruni character bumps into Homer and his colleague, Carl, and throws herself at Carl, declaring: “I want to make love, right now.”
Ms Bruni laughed when asked about the programme. The ?lys?e Palace had no comment but, privately, officials recalled that The Simpsons had a record of pillorying France since coining the expression “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” at the time of the 2003 Iraq invasion.
