New Culture Minister in France

In France over the weekend, the government of prime minister Manuel Valls, formed only four months ago, resigned. That meant that all of the ministers had to be replaced, including Culture Minister Aurélie Filippetti, who got on the wrong side of the intermittents du spectacle this summer. President François Hollande raised some eyebrows by appointing Filippetti's historic rival, Fleur Pellerin, to replace her. Reportedly, the two women do not get along at all. Aureliano Tonet offers some thoughts on the tense succession (Fleur Pellerin, l'anti-Filippetti, August 27) for Le Monde (my translation):

The situation was so bad that the transfer of power, on Tuesday at dusk, gave cinephiles the impression of seeing again one of the oddest sequences of the last Cannes Festival, with the roles reversed. Before the official projection of Bertrand Bonello's Saint Laurent, on May 17, Aurélie Filippetti had demanded to be the only minister to climb the steps, which required Fleur Pellerin to go into the Palais des Festivals by the service entrance. The remake of the scene, on the entrance steps of the ministry, was everything spectators expected: an exchange of icy smiles, a "good luck" through clenched lips by Filippetti, who pushed the impertinence to the point of not inviting the administrative directors to the ceremony -- "unheard of," according to those in the know.

Pellerin, who was adopted from a Korean orphanage by a French family when she was a baby, is the first French government minister of Asian descent. Unfortunately, her tastes lean more toward television and pop music according to the article, which is not exactly our type of culture. You can follow the new minister on Twitter.