In France, pessimism clouds a time of renewal

PARIS - The dead city is slowly awakening, but there is still an element of dread in the air. The grand return from the summer holidays - la rentrée - is preoccupying France, but anxiety abounds about what exactly is being reentered.

This year, the public mood remains sour, with optimism hard to find and open worries about inflation, purchasing power, and the position of France in what seems a suddenly less stable world.

But "this is a particularly morose rentrée," said Alix Girod de l'Ain, a columnist at Elle magazine. "The French have the blues."

The newspapers and fashion magazines are full of the usual postvacation advice and counsel, the government is gearing up for a new political season, new films are waiting, and the publishing houses are about to dump hundreds of new novels in a rapid, crashing flood on people who are still worried about paying for the summer vacation.

The media seem to feel obligated to do special sections for la rentrée.

A magazine of the newspaper Le Figaro has 45 pages on it. The daily newspaper Le Parisien ran a front-page article of "our advice for divorced parents" on how to cope with the rentrée for their children. Elle offers advice from psychologists and parents on how to have "a relaxed and efficient rentrée."

But the French are pessimistic in the polls, and the prime minister, François Fillon, has already called his Cabinet together in an early session to try to speed up economic change and increase purchasing power.

In a survey of 1,006 adults by the polling firm IFOP just before the rentrée for today's edition of the newspaper Ouest-France, only 33 percent of respondents described themselves as optimistic for the future of themselves and their children, the lowest figure in 13 years, and a drop from 53 percent since December. Some 67 percent said they were pessimistic.

Only 18 percent said they had confidence in the ability of Fillon's government to ease the cost of living. In the last year, the prices of certain foods have risen considerably - chicken nearly 12 percent, milk nearly 13 percent.

Jean-Christophe Fromantin, the mayor of Neuilly-sur-Seine, just outside Paris, attributes the malaise to bad news, inflation, and national character. "We're not supple," he said. "We're not optimistic. We see the bottle as half empty."

The anxiety, he said, is personal, but "it's also about the future of France in a world of globalization."