it is like the gods looked deep deep into their grab bag and said, YES. 

yes, yes. it’s for real. THANK YOU FOR THIS MOMENT: THE MOVIE. i die.

because, for real, the only thing better than a “revenge memoir” is a bio-pic. picture it, please…

they pretty much already look like they’re in a bio-pic as it is, amiright?

but wait. maybe you’re like, OLINE, WHO ARE THESE FRENCH PEOPLE AND WHY SHOULD I CARE? in which case, start here. then go here. and then here. then come back.

ARE YOU RIVETED??!

i am riveted.

i am also slightly worried, because it seems this bio-pic is being produced by a french company. the same french company that brought us the BIG SNOOZE that was the nicholas sarkozy bio-pic of awhile back- which, if you’ve ever endured it, then you know that, whilst the french are very good at a very many things (pastries! champagne! fashions!), they maybe are not the best at bio-pics of living figures.

i’m also slightly worried about the producer’s claim that “the theme is universal.” it’s unclear whether that refers to “the struggle of a woman in love” or REVENGE.

the fact that trierweiler is collaborating on the script and the producer’s assurance that “we will discover new things” seems to suggest the latter.

the producer is a friend of trierweiler’s and has said “I’d like the main character to tell her story to a confidant, to better understand the political world, and the woman,” which makes it sound like this is basically going to be a movie wherein actresses depict the conversations of the producer and the writer. fun times.

i have low hopes. can you tell?

i have low hopes largely because i find trierweiler’s game-plan so far tremendously interesting and it seems likely this movie ain’t gonna be delving into any of the things about it which i find interesting.

as the guardian noted, “Trierweiler won much public sympathy after Hollande rejected her in a public statement, following which she had a stay in hospital, but that has largely evaporated since the publication of her book.” the evaporation of that good will is compelling, tied as it is to a woman trying to tell her story.

if she’d not written the memoir, if she’d gone quietly into the night, trierweiler could have been beloved. well, maybe not beloved, as she wasn’t exactly liked before this either, but still. she might have been spared hatred and the loss of the majority of her friends.

but she wrote the memoir.

and did the book tour.

and when she was asked if france was misogynist, she said “In the realm of politics, yes. Women in politics encounter opposition as a matter of course.”

which is uh-mazing and more than any american former first lady has ever explicitly said. so props there.

but this is all rather a bit messy, non? which seems to be where the majority of the complaints against trierweiler fall… along the lines of HOW DARE SHE!

because this isn’t just good gossip. it all matters for a number of reasons. one of which is that this movie, the memoir and trierweiler just in general, are all serious political liabilities for hollande, who’s standing for re-election in 2017.

which is important, but not what especially intrigues me here.

riddle me this: do men pen “revenge memoirs”?

would this headline– which reminds me very much of “prince charles’ ex-girlfriend gets engaged“-

be written of a dude? (btw, it’s not nearly so bad as it sounds. after the article’s 2nd paragraph notes that 2/3rds of the french hate her, the 3rd paragraph reveals, “she was all smiles when she arrived at the Banana Café in central Paris to join a wedding anniversary party for a gay couple.”)

why is it always the woman’s story that is “sordid”?

trierweiler’s rather than hollande’s? monica’s rather than bill’s?

i am intrigued by trierweiler because there is no parallel. she is in uncharted waters.

a first lady who wasn’t married to the president. a first girlfriend dumped. a woman trying to put herself back together- in record time, really- by writing her story, telling her story, and selling her story.

what will we do with her?

a naive sounding question but a legit one. i write a lot about women in the media, about the way the media use women and we women use women in the media to make meanings, and how the lives of women as portrayed in the media and as consumed by us become trammeled up with all this other cultural, national, sexual, political business.

and i write about what we do with that.

and this, right here?

this is the trammeling of trierweiler with all sorts of french lady life-writing/love affair etiquette norms.

there are rumors trierweiler is planning a sequel.

“what she didn’t say is worse than what she wrote,” according to the weekly magazine VSD, via the telegraph.

there are, supposedly, hundreds of texts and a little black book.

“Valérie is the embodiment of a woman’s struggle to scream the truth,” the film’s producer has said.

read: she is dangerous, this woman. that is the story i want to read.