Carla Conti

It was a moment that made headlines well beyond France.

In May last year, as Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron arrived in Vietnam, cameras caught the French First Lady pushing her hands into the president's face as the doors of the presidential plane opened.

The Élysée initially suggested the video might be fake, before President Macron accepted it was genuine and insisted he and his wife had simply been joking around.

Brigitte Macron later said she'd been tired after a turbulent flight and had pushed him away as he tried to make her laugh.

Now, a new book by Paris Match journalist Florian Tardif offers a different account.

In Un couple presque parfait, An Almost Perfect Couple, he claims the incident followed an argument over messages allegedly exchanged between President Macron and Golshifte Farahani, an Iranian-born actress who lives in exile in France.

Farahani is one of Iran's best-known film stars and has been an outspoken critic of the country's theocratic regime since leaving Iran in 2008.

According to Tardif, the relationship was platonic, but some of the messages allegedly went further than friendship.

In an interview promoting the book, he claims the president had sent Farahani messages, including one saying, "'I find you very pretty.'"

The book says Brigitte Macron was upset not so much by one message itself, but by what it suggested.

Her team denies that account and says she never checks her husband's phone.

Farahani also denied rumors of an affair between herself and President Macron.

The episode had already been revived by Donald Trump last month, when the US president mocked Mr Macron over it, saying he was still recovering from the right to the jaw, in his words.

Comments dismissed by the French president as neither elegant nor up to standard, and which were badly received in France.

Carla Conti.

And that's all from us for now.

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