Digested week: central Paris becomes a steel-clad ghost town

Monday

Getting to the Left Bank is easier said than done. Actually it’s fine by metro, but crossing the river by any other means is, temporarily at least, a bit of an ordeal: innumerable detours for closed bridges, and cops as confused as you are.

There are two Parises this week. In one, life feels very normal (or at least, normal for Paris in late July): it’s quiet, but the shops and cafes are mostly open and in the evenings, the terraces fill with thirtysomethings drinking half-price cocktails.

That’s the case where I am, in the ninth arrondissement . The aoûtiens – people who don’t leave the city till August, duh – are all at work, the streets resound with the rumble of tourist suitcases, the talk is of politics, obviously, and holiday plans.

The other, much smaller Paris is a ghost town . Armed police everywhere, 45,000 steel barriers lining the pavements, streets eerily empty of traffic and in the ultra-restricted anti-terror zone along the Seine you need a QR code – even if you live there.

This has not gone down well. The extreme security for Friday’s waterborne Olympic opening ceremony may only be in place for a week, but for Parisians peeved at the best of times, that’s several days too long.

The TV news is full of disgruntled shopkeepers and restaurateurs standing in their deserted premises in the “red” and “grey” zones, including the Îles Saint-Louis and de la Cité in the middle of the Seine, lamenting a 70% slump in business.

It’s worse, many complain, than during France’s draconian Covid lockdown. Internet memes show photos of miners in tunnels , captioned: “Jean-Pierre, smuggler for Parisians who don’t have a QR code but do need to get to the Gare de Lyon.”

On the other hand, as gleeful non-residents have noted , while it must indeed be a bit of a pain having Olympic Games venues erupt across your city centre, what better way to unite the nation, in these polarised times, than pissing off Parisians?

Tuesday

France still doesn’t have a government. I mean, it does have a government, but only a caretaker one after voters in this month’s snap election returned a parliament split broadly into three seemingly terminally hostile blocs, none remotely near a majority.

Emmanuel Macron did say, in a breezy TV interview today , that he wouldn’t approve the 37-year-old senior civil servant that the left bloc – the largest, but only just – had agreed to name as its proposed prime minister after a fortnight’s wrangling.

Names were not the point, the president said. What mattered was whether France’s political parties could follow the example of pretty much every other parliament in Europe and assemble a majority that might stand a chance of governing.

“The parties’ responsibility is to do what every European democracy does: make compromises,” he said. Anyway, with the eyes of the world on France for the next fortnight, any changes before the Olympics were over would “create disorder”.

Unfortunately, compromise is not a word much used in French politics, and everyone – but especially the left, led by the insurrectionists from France Unbowed – is sticking with “our programme, all of our programme, nothing but our programme”.

The root problem is a presidential system designed to avoid parliamentary coalitions that now has to accommodate them. Many suggest the left should be allowed to form a minority government – so it can be voted out, and a more stable majority sought.

Which all sounds very encouraging. But hey, Snoop Dogg’s going to carry the Olympic torch and the French-Canadian power balladeer Celine Dion’s in town . Will she sing at the opening ceremony? “My lips are sealed,” smiled Macron. He’s such a tease.

Wednesday

Weirdly, the Olympics started today, two days before the opening extravaganza. That’s at least partly because the schedules were switched to allow one of France’s sporting chouchous, Antoine Dupont, to get the Games off to a flying start.

The prodigiously talented and now jauntily moustached Dupont, one of the best rugby players in the world, led Les Bleus to their first Six Nations title in more than a decade in 2022, but absented himself from the national 15-a-side team this year to play sevens.

Unfortunately, his side drew with the US in their opening match, due, Dupont said, to “not putting the content on the table”. They went on to beat Uruguay, Dupont scoring a try, and tomorrow face favourites and two-time Olympic champs Fiji.

They’re unlikely to win – although as sports commentators here invariably like to observe, whenever a French team is really up against it, the Gallic cock crows loudest when it’s knee deep in merde .

Thursday

To the cinema (UGC Opéra, since you ask) which, unexpectedly, was full. This year’s unlikely summer smash is a rip-roaring three-hour costume drama that has so far pulled in more than 4.5 million filmgoers since it opened in late June.

The Count of Monte Cristo, starring Pierre Niney, Bastien Bouillon and Anaïs Demoustier, is a reasonably faithful adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ action-packed classic of injustice, hope, vengeance and mercy first published in 1844.

Complete with dashing heroes, despicable villains, dreamy damsels, foul prisons, dramatic escapes, hidden treasures, swashbuckling swordfights and pistols at dawn, it’s gone down a storm: “a true cinematographic page-turner”, as Le Monde put it .

More surprisingly, it’s helped the nation’s grateful bookshops shift a startling 180,000 copies of Dumas’s novel – all 1,500 pages of it – in barely six weeks. According to the publisher, Gallimard, that’s roughly 10 times the usual figure.

France being France, this merits reflection. Philosophie magazine put it down to the “existential question” posed by the story of Edmond Dantès, who, as the eponymous count, seeks revenge after unjust imprisonment: “Can one deserve happiness?”

Xavier Pommereau, a psychiatrist, urged everyone to see the film , which he says explores “the feelings we all experience: love, hate, suffering, vengeance, fury, calm after the storm”. What it was really all about, he said, was forgiveness.

Be that as it may, both the film and the novel conclude with Dumas’s celebrated phrase: “All human wisdom resides in these two words: wait, and hope!” Plainly, the great man is not up to speed with contemporary French politics.

Friday

The big day, and … it’s raining. Also, “a bunch of irresponsable fanatics” (says the French railway chief) have staged a “massive attack” on the rail network, severely disrupting most of the country’s high-speed services into the weekend.

Related: French rail network hit by arson attacks before Olympics opening ceremony

That’s going to mess with the plans of lots of people hoping to come to Paris for what, right now, looks likely to be a slightly damp opening ceremony – but also everyone who was still hoping against hope to escape the capital for the duration of the Games.

Although, whisper it, Parisians are starting to get excited. “Everyone looks at us with a mix of exasperation and affection – we have this reputation as permanently pissed off,” Patrick Boucheron, a historian who helped script the ceremony, told me.

“But you know, everyone I meet is really beginning to feel the vibe,” Boucheron said. “It’s normal. We’re a world city, a joyous, historic, quarrelsome, festive, long-suffering, infuriating, inclusive mess, and today – today, we’re welcoming the world.”

France has hopes of a top-five finish in the medal table. The papers are full of Dupont, who last night sealed Les Bleus’ advance to the rugby semi-finals with a flying try. “Doesn’t he want to be our new PM?” asked a leading radio presenter .

Let the Games begin.