The Arc de Triomphe during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics, July 26, in Paris, France.Lionel Bonaventure/The Associated Press
There has not been a political truce in France for the Olympics, but the French are nevertheless the most harmonious they have been in years. As Spain’s El Païs remarked a week into the Paris Games: “France has taken a break from being France.”
The party mood in Paris has continued in anticipation of Sunday’s closing ceremony, which promises to be as joyous as the opening ceremony, topped off by Celine Dion’s spectacular rendition of Édith Piaf’s L’Hymne à l’amour from the Eiffel Tower.
The Paris Olympics organizing committee, led by three-time gold-medal canoeist Tony Estanguet, faced daunting odds in staging what countless Parisians had, prior to the Games, dismissed as a massive inconvenience and vanity project for President Emmanuel Macron.
By the time Ms. Dion appeared, Mr. Estanguet was already being hailed as a genius who had managed the impossible. He had made the French feel good about themselves and their country. And that was before French athletes began racking up a record medal count at some of the most visually breathtaking Olympic venues ever.
The Games “remind us that, even if in France we never agree on anything, in moments that matter, we know how to come together and join forces,” Mr. Estanguet said at the opening ceremony. Remarkably, his words held true for two whole weeks as the notoriously finicky French fell under the Olympics spell.
Simon Houpt: Olympic opening ceremony through the streets and sights of Paris was a French feast
Not everything went off without a hitch. There was a brouhaha over the opening ceremony scene that featured drag queens and nearly nude singer Philippe Katerine. Upset Christian leaders and conservative politicians accused artistic director Thomas Jolly of disrespect in allegedly parodying Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper.
“One looks desperately for the celebration of sporting values and the beauty of France amidst the crude woke propaganda,” Marion Maréchal, a far-right member of the European Parliament and the niece of National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, wrote of the ceremony on X.
“This ceremony is the best response to the rise of fascism and the extreme right,” Sandrine Rousseau, a Green member of France’s National Assembly, replied on the same platform. “Let the world be woke. It will be so much more beautiful.”
The Vatican eventually weighed in, albeit a week after the fact, which was perhaps a reflection of the internal tension within the Catholic Church between reformers and traditionalists. In a statement released in French, the Holy See said it was “saddened by certain scenes” in the opening ceremony. “Allusions ridiculing the religious convictions of many people should not be found in a prestigious event where the whole world unites around common values.”
The Paris organizing committee apologized to anyone who took offence. Mr. Jolly, who faced death threats after the ceremony, insisted he did not take his inspiration for the scene from The Last Supper but rather sought to recreate “a great pagan feast linked to the gods of Olympus.” Though he did not deny he was making a political statement by including many drag queens, a threesome kissing, a post-guillotine Marie Antoinette holding her head in her hands, and members of the Republican Guard dancing along with megastar French-Malian singer Aya Nakamura, in an Olympics opening ceremony that will not soon be topped.
The ceremony “was about Republican ideas, it was about ideas of inclusion, about the ideas of kindness, generosity and solidarity that we madly need,” Mr. Jolly said. “I wanted to send a message of love, of inclusion, precisely not at all of division.”
The French overwhelmingly backed him up. A poll commissioned by the Paris organizing committee found that 86 per cent of respondents deemed the opening ceremony “a success” while 75 per cent said it made them feel proud to be French.
Once these Games and the Paralympics are over, Mr. Estanguet seems destined to be seen as a modern-day French hero and, who knows, perhaps drafted to take up even bigger responsibilities in his home country. France is, after all, still without a full-time prime minister since Gabriel Attal officially stepped down from the job last month in the wake of legislative elections that produced a hung parliament. (Mr. Attal remains in the position on an acting basis.) The deeply unpopular Mr. Macron could use some of Mr. Estanguet’s star power as he seeks to recharge his own political movement.
Most French voters probably wish Mr. Macron had refrained from repeatedly interrupting his vacation to show up at various Games venues to share the limelight with the host-country stars of these Olympics, including 100-kilogram-category judo champion Teddy Riner and four-time gold medal swimmer Léon Marchand.
Their President’s constant presence at the Games kept reminding them that, alas, France will soon be back to being France again.