The beau is mine! Why Gallic men are enjoying a romantic renaissance

When I look back, I think I always wanted to be with a Frenchman. Even at 14, growing up on the Isle of Wight, I picked my first boyfriend on the basis that he habitually wore a vintage Parisian-style mac with a black poloneck. Despite my geographic proximity to Normandy, there was no direct ferry and thus a dearth of real, live Gallic options: I had to make do. We hung out on the waterfront, smoking — me in a black beret — pretending that we were in a Jean-Luc Godard film and that the Solent was the Left Bank of the Seine; he was Jean-Paul Belmondo to my Jean Seberg. At university, I fell for a moody, blue-eyed Manc because of his uncanny resemblance to Alain Delon. It helped that he drove a moped, perfect for re-enactments of The Girl on a Motorcycle. My first birthday gift to any subsequent boyfriend was a Breton sweater, usually pronounced to be ‘too gay’.

I tried and tested a cross-section of nationalities: other Englishmen (emotionally and sexually constipated, fidgety eye contact, intimacy-avoidance issues), two Italians (Oedipus complexes, too worried about you ruffling their hair wax), and an Argentinian (hot, but supremely arrogant). Then, finally, I met Maurice, an art director from Marseille. He had a magnificently prominent nose, smoked Gauloises sans filtre, dressed like a 1960s-era Yves Saint Laurent in horn-rimmed specs and dishevelled suits, and liked to drink red wine in the afternoon, in bed. He wasn’t obsessed with Fantasy Football League, his pants’ elastic remained safely at trouser-waist level, he didn’t fix our dates via WhatsApp — he actually picked up the phone and called me. He was a gentleman, neither over-effusive nor non-committal and, best of all, he lived in Paris. It was my light-bulb moment. My early beret-wearing instincts suddenly all made sense.

I’m not the only woman to have been struck by the charms of les hommes français recently. The secret appears to be out. Cheryl Cole and Gemma Arterton have both found their very own Serge Gainsbourgs this year, joining the ranks of the already enlightened. Scarlett Johansson started dating journalist Romain Dauriac in 2012 and can be seen weaving in and out of Parisian traffic on the back of her beau’s moto. The pair are expecting a child in a few months and their marriage is rumoured to be imminent. Sofia Coppola has two children with Thomas Mars of French alt-rock band Phoenix; in 2012 Natalie Portman married her Black Swan choreographer Benjamin Millepied, soon to be the dance director of the Paris Opera Ballet; and Halle Berry wed Kylie’s ex Olivier Martinez in 2013. These women are the Francophile new wave, who have followed in the ballet-pump-clad footsteps of Jane Birkin, Charlotte Rampling and Kristin Scott Thomas — all of whom traversed the Channel permanently for the sake of l’amour fou (not to mention easy-access Chanel shopping). ‘The French lover is no longer a distant legend,’ announced Paris Match magazine recently, but ‘a species in the process of regeneration.’

Meanwhile, Cole has changed her name to Cheryl Fernandez-Versini, after marrying Côte d’Azur playboy and Cannes Festival pop-up bar Cosy Box owner Jean-Bernard, despite the Geordie language barrier. It all happened très, très vite. The pair only met four months ago, but then the French did invent the coup de foudre, as well as proper kissing. Actress Gemma Arterton has also converted, ditching her Italian husband Stefano Catelli in favour of a Frenchman. She learned the language of love for French film Gemma Bovery, and put it into practice on set when she fell for the assistant director, Franklin Ohanessian. She can now be spotted on the Eurostar most weekends. I mean, she’s practically French already.

Pourquoi toute cette? you may ask. Well, a Frenchman has many, many talents, but first and foremost is his aesthetic. The fact is that Frenchmen just look permanently post-coital. It’s not what they wear — although it’s always low-key and classic — it’s the way they wear it; not preened to within an inch of their lives, Italian-style, but décontracté, insouciant, like they’ve dressed after a protracted afternoon’s lovemaking. Then there’s the aquiline features, specifically the Gallic nose. It’s nearly always big, and hardly ever perfect. The young Jean-Baptiste Mondino, the French Marlon Brando, had the bent snout of a boxer, as if he’d been brawling over one woman or another all his life, his fag still dangling from his mouth. Ditto Vincent Cassel, star of La Haine, Mesrine and Eastern Promises, whose frisson of brutishness and open admission of vulnerability kept the attention of Monica Bellucci, the world’s sexiest woman, for 17 years.

The French nose simultaneously suggests toughness, sensitivity and an artistic temperament, a melange perfectly expressed by Romain Duris’ character in Jacques Audiard’s The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005), a petty criminal who is secretly studying to be a concert pianist. Please note: to women this is super-hot. The face of Bleu de Chanel cologne, Gaspard Ulliel, who plays the eponymous role of Yves in this year’s French film Saint Laurent, might be just another pretty boy, were it not for an air of roughness lent by the scar from a Doberman attack on his cheek.

The Gallic proboscis is also a sign of discernment: Frenchmen are passionate connoisseurs of life. They adore food and though few reach the proportions of Gérard Depardieu, the same gastronomic spirit abounds. What’s more, they can cook more than spaghetti bolognese or an omelette. A Frenchman will nonchalantly whip up crab thermidor or a soufflé for you, off the cuff, after cinq à sept drinks; and when you eat out, he’ll offer to pay the bill as a matter of course, not tot up his share on a calculator. Gallic men are simply classy. They drink whisky and wine, so there’s no beer-induced farting and burping; and they’ll always look you straight in the eye when they toast you — if not, it brings them seven years bad luck in the form of terrible sex. And, zut alors, Frenchmen really don’t do bad sex.

OK, the Frenchie can be a little moody, but it’s not that he’s repressed or has withdrawn into his man cave because he thinks he might like you way too much. He doesn’t feel compromised or exposed when he’s falling in love. It’s just that he’s a thinker, brought up in the French intellectual tradition on the likes of existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and les philosophes. Be patient with him: he’s got a lot of Arthur Rimbaud and Charles Baudelaire poetry to plough through and reflect on.

Gallic men also respect intelligence in the opposite sex; they are not intimidated by strong, smart women, they do not scamper away with their tails between their legs at the mere utterance of a polysyllabic word, as some British men do. Nor do they put women on a pedestal like some Italians, then drop them from a great height once they reach 35, damning them to a life of pop socks and viscose house dresses. The French admire women of all ages: Catherine Deneuve, Charlotte Rampling, Isabelle Huppert are all still considered major sex symbols in their sixties and beyond. Gallic men love women. Full stop. And they themselves age like a bottle of Château Lafite. For the pièce de résistance of the French male species is le renard argenté: the silver fox. I cite the aforementioned Vincent Cassel, 47; ex-footballer David Ginola, 47; and Hidden actor Daniel Auteuil, 64. Even Alain Delon’s charm is still going strong at 78.

Sadly, I won’t be around to see Maurice turn grey. We broke up. He found it a little hard to accept that — just sometimes — I might put my career or friends before our impassioned liaison. Oh, well. C’est la vie. Still, I don’t have to move to Paris to replace him, instead the proverbial mountain has come to Mohammed — fortuitously, half of France now seems to live in London. ES

Take me homme France’s most delectable men du jour

VINCENT CASSEL, 47

Schadenfreude is a nasty thing, but it’s hard not to celebrate the fact that Vincent Cassel split from Monica Bellucci last year and is now — gulp — single. If the I-could-kick-the-shit-out-of-anyone-bothering-you-baby frame, the artistic temperament and intense gaze aren’t enough for you, he also speaks English, Italian, Russian and Portuguese. Of course, it’s best when he’s talking to you in French. He’s also an excellent samba dancer — we know because we bumped into him in a Rio nightclub, and it was très chaud.