President converses with lover via text
FRANCE
PRESIDENT Francois Hollande of France and his mistress Julie Gayet talk via text message because they fear that their private life will again be the subject of newspaper headlines.
‘‘It’s big love even if they are discreet,’’ an unnamed friend was quoted as saying yesterday in weekly magazine Paris Match.
The publication of the article coincided with the appearance of Gayet’s lawyer in a court in Nanterre. Jean Ennochi told the court that his client’s professional and personal life had been devastated by the publication of photographs revealing her affair. The photos had violated ‘‘the most intimate side of her privacy’’ and turned her into prey for paparazzi, he said.
Ennochi was speaking as the actress, who was not present in court, claimed 50,000 (NZ$82,000) in damages for breach of privacy from Closer magazine, which disclosed her relationship with Hollande. The case is seen as a test of the extent to which French media can skirt around France’s strict privacy laws in the name of news.
The photographs of Hollande arriving late at night on the back of a scooter to meet his mistress plunged him into a sex scandal without precedent in France and led to his separation from former partner Valerie Trierweiler.
Closer’s lawyer, Delphine Pando, said the article raised questions about Hollande’s integrity and flew in the face of his election pledge to be an ‘‘irreproachable’’ president. ‘‘This liaison had an impact on public life,’’ she said.
However, Enocchi said Gayet, 41, had ‘‘suffered and still suffers on a daily basis’’ because of the photographs. She was a discreet and private woman who enjoyed film festivals and going out with Tadeo, 14, and Ezechiel, 13, her children from her marriage to Argentinian film director Santiago Amigorena.
Ennochi said Gayet had hidden in her flat in Paris ‘‘for a long time’’ after Closer appeared in January. ‘‘The first time she went out, she was attacked by a veritable hoard of photographers who followed her to the chemists and to the supermarket, gluing themselves to the supermarket window when she was inside.’’
The money she sought, though high by French standards, was ‘‘well below the harm she has suffered’’, he said.