Cheat Sheet

Alain Benainous / AP

Talk about striking it rich: Documentary-film director George Scott planned last year to make a movie about Carla Bruni—“a music film about a model who turns into a singer and makes a success of it.” Then, Bruni conducted an open affair with new French president Nicolas Sarkozy, quickly became the country’s new first lady, and—to Scott’s great surprise—still agreed to be his subject. The resulting film, which airs in France on New Year’s Day and in Britain in January (Bruni filmed in both French and English), features the first lady in the presidential Elysée Palace and serenading Sarko. Bruni, whose previous lovers include Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger, also dishes on the beginning of her affair with Sarkozy at a dinner party: “There were only eight people and we were seated next to each other and it was instantaneous, immediate . . . I don’t know what he has but he has something very protective that I never found before, maybe because I was much more attracted to artists.”