On May 25th, 2025, cameras waiting for the Macrons on a Hanoi runway captured a strange scene that continues to spark conversation a year later. As the doors of the presidential plane opened, the French president was seen brushing his wife’s hand away from his face, a controversial gesture that many interpreted as a slap.
Emmanuel Macron, 48, was quick to deny it. “My wife and I were just joking around, like we always do,” he insisted. As the media frenzy grew, he urged, “Everyone needs to calm down.”
© Getty ImagesHowever, Paris Match journalist Florian Tardif presents a different version of events in his new book, An (Almost) Perfect Couple, published on Wednesday, May 13th.
According to Tardif, Macron allegedly maintained a “platonic relationship” for several months with French-Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani. “That is what people close to them have repeatedly told me,” Tardif shared on the RTL radio station. During this time, the president and the actress reportedly exchanged “fairly explicit” messages, including comments such as “I think you are very beautiful.” This situation, the journalist explained, “created tension in the Macron marriage, causing that private moment to spill into the public eye,” referring to the alleged argument the couple had on the plane just before landing in the Vietnamese capital.
© Stephane Cardinale - Corbis
© Foc KanThe disagreement reportedly started when Brigitte, 73, read one of the messages from the 42-year-old Farahani on her husband’s phone.
“What hurt Brigitte was not so much the content of the messages, but what they hinted at: a possibility. It was nothing tangible, nothing truly condemnable, but the mere idea that something could have existed was enough for Brigitte. It was a door left ajar in a world she thought she controlled. And to top it off, with a much younger woman!” noted Tardif, who claims that Macron cut off contact with Farahani after the incident.
© Taylor HillBrigitte’s inner circle has flatly denied to the newspaper Le Parisien that the much-talked-about gesture had anything to do with the Iranian actress, further asserting that the First Lady would never go through her husband’s phone. “Brigitte Macron categorically denied this version of events directly to the author of the book on March 5, specifying that she never looks at her husband’s cell phone,” they stated.
© LUDOVIC MARINThe Love Story of Macron and Brigitte
The love story between the French president and the First Lady has captured global attention due to their 25-year age gap and the circumstances in which they fell in love: at the school where he was a student and she taught literature and theater.
“Our marriage is not a model marriage. It is obviously not the ideal couple. Living together is complicated; it is a daily struggle. When there is a large age difference, it is even more complicated,” Brigitte admitted during a 2019 interview with the RTL radio station.
© Getty ImagesIn that interview, she also explained that the support of her three children, Sébastien, Laurence, and Tiphaine, was crucial during a time marked by intense criticism following her divorce and subsequent relationship with Macron.
© GettyImages“Of course I hurt them, just as all divorcing parents hurt their children. But at a certain point, I realized that Emmanuel was my life. And I think they understood that,” she expressed. “If my children had not allowed me to live with Emmanuel, I could not have done it,” she added.
