Jump to full article: Electronic Telegraph blogs (uk), 2009-04-22
Author: Henry Samuel
Intro: It has always struck me in France how wide the extremes are between those with a total disregard for rules and those who apply them to Kafkaesque levels. Here we are approaching Kafka over the implementation of a tobacco advertising law banning the "direct or indirect" promotion of smoking. It's as if there is deep fear than any exception to the rule might bring the entire edifice crashing down.
Coco Chanel smoked 50 cigarettes a day. It is almost impossible to find a photo of her without one in her hand or mouth. The original poster for a new film out today on called Coco Before Chanel - which by the way, features in magazines and billboards outside public transport - perfectly projects the fashion legend's androgynous sensuality, fag in hand and in silk pyjamas.
But Metrobus, which runs advertising on Paris' trains and buses, chose to ban it and forced the producers to provide an insipid alternative of her standing next to the male lead. . . .
Libé has once again been vocally lambasting the Tati airbrushing, mockingly wondering why the authorities didn't take offence to the fact that he is not wearing a helmet, is riding an old-fashioned, polluting vehicle and that the small boy riding behind him is not seated securely.
"Why not go all the way?" it asked. It has a point.
All this is, of course, great publicity for the Tati retrospective and the Chanel film,
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