DEAUVILLE: President Nicolas Sarkozy s soap opera love life and the radical change he is bringing to France will be brought to the big screen next year in a documentary, the film s US director said Thursday.
Marina Zenovich, who this week was at the Deauville American film festival to present her documentary on the tortured life of Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski, said she was now setting her sights on Sarkozy.
I m very interested in how he s trying to change France – how the French are very one way and he s trying to make them another way – but of course you can t help seeing the soap opera of his love life, she told AFP.
You can t get away from the drama of his personal life, she said in a telephone interview from the United States where she has just returned after Deauville.
Sarkozy was elected 15 months ago and since then has embarked on a sweeping program of reform. In his short time in office he has also divorced his second wife and married pop star Carla Bruni.
Zenovich s documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired offers a sympathetic view of the famed director who fled the United States in 1978 to avoid being jailed for having sex with a 13-year-old girl.
The Los Angeles-based director said Thursday that she had not yet approached Sarkozy to ask for permission to follow him around for her film.
In a perfect world he would give me access like he did to Yasmina Reza, the leading French author who was allowed to shadow Sarkozy during his electoral campaign last year in order to write a book about him.
But Zenovich said she would go ahead with the project with or without access. She noted that in another film she made about a Frenchman, in this case the maverick ex-tycoon and former minister Bernard Tapie, the subject refused to be interviewed.
But she said a contact she made while making the Tapie film might prove useful for her next project.
Jacques Seguela is an advertising executive who last November introduced Sarkozy to Carla Bruni.
He was a great help to me in my Tapie film, I might call him and see what he can do, said Zenovich. – AFP
