PARIS — THE turquoise tranquillity of the Cotes d’Azur was rocked a couple of times during the Cannes Lions Festival, the advertising world’s rose-soaked answer to the Cannes Film Festival.

Al Gore snubbed Monica Lewinsky. Lewinsky, who was giving a speech for Ogilvy & Mather about how she became “patient zero” in the cyberbullying epidemic, was slated to sit in a V.I.P. box with the former vice president, who got an award for being a good brand.

But her invite got yanked.

The contretemps was a reminder that Gore’s prissy attitude toward l’affaire Monica helped cost him the election, because he was so angry at Bill Clinton that he leashed the Big Dog, curtailing the president’s campaigning, even in the South. If Al had been less eager to put baby in a corner, there would have been no phony action on Iraq and plenty of action on melting glaciers.

Monica’s main bullies were not of the cyber variety. The Internet was just getting up and running. Her chief bullies were flesh and blood, a raffish president and feminist first lady who are now vying to be a feminist president and raffish first lad. They’re the ones who tried to paint her as a “narcissistic looney toon,” as Hillary put it to her friend Diane Blair.

Sidney Blumenthal, Hillary’s Doberman and email correspondent, led the sliming of Monica as a fantasist and stalker. Hillary’s friends do not regard Monica as a victim, but a predator. They think she let herself in for trouble when she took up with a married president who was a magnet for right-wing bullies.

Yet, as Hillary’s advisers said, being the victim of the Monica mess gave Hillary the impetus, and public good will, to start her own political rise.

In her speech at Cannes, Monica did say it hurt to be called “That Woman.” But other than that reference to Bill Clinton, she sticks to anonymous cyberbullies, which may be prudent, with Hillary out on the trail. And even if it’s a dodge, it’s nice to see the 41-year-old move out of her self-imposed exile, looking lovely, acting gracious and speaking out for a good cause.

The other ruckus on the Riviera came when the “influencers” tried to get out of town while French taxi drivers were striking, blocking airports, burning tires, smashing windows and harassing Uber drivers. They were protesting competition from the cheapest and least regulated Uber service, UberPop, which is illegal in France. (Two Uber executives were indicted there last week.)

In Cannes, the Uber app also included helicopters, so the well-heeled media barons, fearing No Exit, began summoning choppers to go to the airport, with surge pricing at 800 euros.

France has been going through a heat wave and a rough time. A poll Thursday in Liberation, a left-leaning newspaper, even showed a surprisingly strong yearning for Dominique Strauss-Kahn, recently acquitted of pimping charges.

Headlines railed about “Espionnage Americain,” the news that America has spied on three French presidents. The Greek debt crisis threatens to erode the European dream. An ISIS fanatic at an American-owned factory in Lyon killed his French boss and displayed his head on the gate, as ISIS terrorists also hit Tunisia and Kuwait. It was a chilling echo of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. As America unwinds the Patriot Act, the French have been putting sweeping Big Brother security measures in place, legalizing phone tapping and email interception.

Although strikes come and go here, the violence of the Uber brawl seemed to shock even the French. While commentators deplored the thuggery of some cabdrivers, they deplored “L’uberisation” even more. “The uberisation of the economy is a godless and lawless development model,” wrote Jean-Michel Bouguereau in La Republique des Pyrenees.

Yves Theard in Le Figaro warned that “the invasion of the digital economy” risked loosening the screws of the French economic model, with its emphasis on workers’ rights and social protection, “one by one.” Yves Dusart in the newspaper L’Est Republicain, summed up, “The French model, snug in its padded jewelry box, is cracking.”

What startled France, a country where the customer is always wrong, was the revolt of the taxi rider. For the last half year, many have turned away from cabs, loving the convenience of Uber and the way the drivers would open doors and not have the meter prematurely racking up the tab.

The French were stunned to learn that the fifth floor of the American Embassy, a few doors from the Elysee Palace, was a trompe l’oeil design hiding what they call the “big ears” of eavesdropping equipment pointed at Francois Hollande (and his actress girlfriend, Julie Gayet, who is stealthily hanging out at the Elysee).

“It’s a little bit like an invited guest whom you’ve surprised looking into the bedroom through a keyhole,” huffed Laurent Joffrin in a signed editorial in Liberation, concluding the only way to deal with this “stain” by a “condescending ally” against the rules of good conduct was to give asylum to “the courageous whistle-blower,” Edward Snowden.

French officials, pleased with the successful collaboration of the French and the U.S. against jihadists in Africa, Libya, Mali and Syria, were more inclined to treat the wiretapping as an old story. (Though Liberation denounced that as hypocritical, “a case of Tartufferie.”)

I visited the Foreign Ministry at the Quai d’Orsay — bristling with emergency meetings on terrorism — to check on the status of French-American relations.

Amid the troubles besetting tourists coming to France, the ministry website had warnings for French tourists going to America: Do not act too “Latin,” with sexual behavior and jokes, and “keep calm in all circumstances,” given America’s scorn for gun control, which the French find incomprehensible. They were also advised not to make any aggressive gestures at the police.

Romain Nadal, a charming ministry spokesman, was eager to assure me that the “strong love story” between the countries had not soured. He shook his head at Courtney Love’s angry tweet that the Uber ferocity had made Paris more dangerous than Baghdad.

Nadal, now 47, fondly reminisced about a Greyhound bus trip he took around America when he was 18. “I went to Tallahassee,” he said proudly. “We love the contrast. We love Death Valley.

“What I was always surprised at is, the American people are more friendly than the French people and, in a certain way, more Latin than us,” he said. “They’re closer to the south of France than the north. Here in Paris, people are more cold.”

He enthused about American movies, praising the talent of “the Brothers Cohens,” and Sean Penn (which he pronounced “Champagne”).

He said the French are very attentive to the racial debate in America, because they have melting-pot tensions as well. “We know the fight for the civil rights, the movie of this man working in the White House, Forest Whitaker.”

Despite the disgust over his “big ears” — the ones at the embassy — President Obama is popular. “For us,” Nadal said, “it’s a miracle, it’s a dream, a black man ruling the United States, not just any country, but one that means a lot to us.

“If we criticize the States, it’s because we love the States. But we love a certain representation of the States. We love Lincoln. We love Kennedy. We love Roosevelt and the New Deal. We love the Founding Fathers. We love the creativity. We don’t like the rifle association.”